The aim of this thesis is to give an account of the position taken by certain women dramatists in the context of both box-office success and theatre criticism in Brazil in the latter half of the twentieth century in order to provide a panoramic view of the way the Brazilian theater canon reacts to the work of women authors, by either incorporating it or not, according to political and social circumstances. It is hoped then that a more comprehensive vision of these dramatists will result than that of the traditional academic criticism which either elevates by acceptance or dismisses by ignoring or playing down their work. The production of three dramatists will be analysed here, namely, those plays by Leilah Assuncao, Maria Adelaide Amaral and Isis Baiao which fall into the period 1969--1999, and which exemplify two key tendencies in the Brazilian theatre of the last thirty years. These tendencies are: first, the attempt to widen the traditional horizon of politicized theatre by adding to its socio-political concerns a focus on the individual and his/her particular agenda, and, secondly, the break with any specifically aesthetic or conceptual format on stage in a blurring of the legacies of tradition and the vanguard, in which a "hybridism" of form and language is particularly noticeable in the privileging of a kind of writing that is not bound by formal limits. Such an analysis has made it possible to highlight how determined types of reaction may be altered along the time when different interpretive parameters are used by the critical community and by the public. While a certain sympathy is shown here for the feminist reading of the ideological bases of the literary canon, this is done not only to corroborate the masculine bent of such a canon to the exclusion of the Other, but also to prove that the criteria regulating excellence are products of a specific ideology which changes according to its sociohistorical context. The ultimate goal here is, thus, to make

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [192]-201).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 279 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-279). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 364-374). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99225

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-298) / Microfiche. / x, 298 leaves, bound 29 cm

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