Between 1969 and 1980 Edvard Radzinskii wrote three ‘historico-political’ plays which were later published as a trilogy entitled ‘Theatre of the Times …’. This thesis attempts to unravel the nature of time in the trilogy and invokes Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion about the forms of time and the chronotope in literary narratives to do that. Bakhtinian concept of the chronotope provides a suitable strategy for reading a trilogy that aims to re-present ‘real’ time, place and human beings. The concept also provides a vantage point from where the trilogy can be read both from within the time-space of its main protagonists and from that of its author, readers, performers and spectators. ¶ Both ‘Dialogues with Socrates' and 'Lunin …’ are structured around the chronotope of the prison which is associated with the chronotope of the acropolis in ‘Dialogues with Socrates’ and with the chronotope of the masked-ball in ‘Lunin …’. In ‘Theatre of the Times of Nero and Seneca’ the circus-theatre functions as the main chronotope. All these chronotopes serve as plot-constitutive devices and provide appropriate space in which the lives and times of the main protagonists can be adequately re-presented. However, the use of the concept of the chronotope in reading the trilogy does not imply that it can be read meaningfully only from within the time-space of its protagonists. The trilogy reconstructs the historical time-space but also engages in a substantial way with contemporary Soviet reality. This is achieved through an interaction between literary and real chronotopes. There is little doubt that most Soviet readers, performers and spectators negotiatied the chronotopes of the prison and the circus-theatre and the motifs of show-trial and execution from within their own time-space, their own historical experience. The thesis discusses a large number of reviews published in Soviet media to show that most critics read the trilogy from within the discourses about positive hero and socialist realism, because of which Socrates and Lunin were also turned into positive heroes. ¶ One of the most intriguing aspect of the three plays is the ‘play within a play’ structure which achieves its maximum potential in the final play of the trilogy where it is combined with the theme of metamorphoses and multiple role playing. The trilogy, like Pirandello’s trilogy about theatre, is able to foreground its own theatricality and explore the role of theatricality and role playing in and outside theatre. In ‘Theatre of the Times of Nero and Seneca’ the boundary between role playing in life and in theatre becomes so blurred that history begins to resemble the writing and staging of a play. ¶ Apart from exploring the nature of theatricality, the trilogy also questions the conventions of its genre. The three plays do not follow the conventional framing devices employed by dramatic texts and foreground the presence of a mediating narrator. This ‘novelisation’, is more evident in ‘Lunin …’ in which the frequent use of verbs in the past tense in the extra-dialogic text can be linked to the presence of a mediating narrator.

PhD (English) / Department of English / See the attached abstract below