Following in Caryl Churchill’s footsteps: Rona Munro’s neo-Brechtian Didactic Paratext in Pandas (2011) - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies Année : 2013

Following in Caryl Churchill’s footsteps: Rona Munro’s neo-Brechtian Didactic Paratext in Pandas (2011)

Résumé

Rona Munro is a contemporary Scottish woman writer (born in 1959 in Aberdeen) interested in the issue of women’s place in Scotland in a context of social mayhems in which the notions of feminism and nationalism need to be articulated. Through her work she aims at conveying a national identity for Scotland in which women have a role to play and have stories to tell. Therefore, she finds devices to inscribe her plays among that of playwrights whose objective is to give Scotland a national identity artistically and who stage working-class women (re-) telling their stories and voicing their versions of history. The study of the stage directions and the peritext of Munro's play "Pandas" under a neo-Brechtian light will enable to show that the play is didactic. The playwright wants to deliver a particular message which has an impact on audiences and readers. Indeed, the latter may be taught about the conditions of women in Scotland through the dialogues of the actors but also through the stage directions and any adjacent textual and visual information (that is Munro’s first aim, delivering a political message). In parallel, this analysis will shed light on the way Munro (re) defines the contours of Scottish drama and gives Scotland a national identity thanks to the Brechtian theory of didactic drama (this will be her second aim, an aesthetic one); a national identity that is paradoxically enhanced by the inclusion of Chinese elements, including pandas, the thread with which all those texts were sewn together.

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  • HAL Id : halshs-01163136 , version 1

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Virginie Privas-Bréauté. Following in Caryl Churchill’s footsteps: Rona Munro’s neo-Brechtian Didactic Paratext in Pandas (2011). Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, 2013, Contested Witnesses in Irish and Scottish literature, 7 (1), pp.173-190. ⟨halshs-01163136⟩
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