Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams

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СКАЧАТЬ studies initiate and especially the analytical toolkit cognitive narrative theory furnishes can provide a new perspective of the playscripts and a better understanding and appreciating of them; something that has been neglected so far.

The common lack of interest in playscripts does not mean that there have not been attempts to propose a theatre narratology within the broader poststructuralist narrative studies. There have been a few of this kind, but not many deal extensively with playscripts; those critics who do actually propose a few rules and theories about drama as text fail to provide examples. Most of the ←60 | 61→practical and analytical work is done on the performance aspect of plays rather than the playscripts. Let me illustrate this point. A very good example of the described tendency is Eike Muny’s Erzählperspektive im Drama (2008). Muny has written one of the more elaborate books arguing for a narratology of drama. He concentrates on two main concepts: focalisation and the narrator. Ironically, the narrator seems to be a concept many critics are reluctant to let go of, even though moving within the paradigms of postclassical narrative theory. What Muny justly criticises, nevertheless, is the preference most of the works on drama have for plays with an overt narrator figure. According to Muny, a search for analytical work done on plays would show a tendency towards epic drama, memory plays or plays with a “generative narrator”.⁴⁸ Muny believes that a comprehensive theory should encompass all types of plays; since most plays are considered to have narrators that are latent, covert and impersonal.

He also criticises those who believe that the ultimate realisation of a play is its performance and that its textual form is of secondary importance.⁴⁹ Muny is clearly against the marginalisation of the stage directions and introductory passages and believes that they should be taken seriously and be regarded as part of the (diegetic) narrative world of the play. He makes references to Jahn’s categorisation of drama in Jahn’s “Voice and Agency in Drama”.⁵⁰ Muny’s contribution to the study of drama and narrative is important and provides much detail. Anyone who wants to focus on the narrative instance and on the concept of focalisation is provided with ample examples and a theoretical framework. However, Muny does not concern himself much with characters, their consciousness and the social setting of the storyworlds in drama.

Vanhaesebrouck in his “Towards a Theatrical Narratology”⁵¹ applies a quite different tone in his approach towards a theatrical narratology. He is one of those critics who believe that a theatrical narratology should exclusively deal with theatre as performance and disregards the playscript entirely. Ironically he talks both about watching and reading plays in his arguments: “…narratologists gradually started paying attention to the reception, to the actual reader and spectator. How does he or she derive signification from the narrative network to which they are exposed while reading or watching?” He predominantly argues against a ←61 | 62→tradition of “logo-centric” close-reading of playscripts and advocates a focus on the dynamics between narrative studies and specifically visual semiotics, which he believes can only be gained by studying performance. Though his approach is a thoroughly cognitivist approach, it deals only with the performance aspect of drama and leaves the ignored playscript undiscussed.

Fludernik’s ideas on drama⁵² come closest to what I would like to achieve through a synthesis of a drama narratology and Palmer’s approach. Coming from within a cognitive tradition, as already mentioned earlier, and basing her approach on her concept of experientiality, Fludernik regards the cognitive experience that the anthropomorphic inhabitants of the storyworld undergo as the most important feature of narrative, in this case, drama. Thus she argues that the absence of the narrator persona does not pose a problem and does not inevitably disqualify drama from being considered as narrative (358). She underlines her assertions and the importance of the existence of characters and their consciousness.

      Later in the essay, she suggests, like Jahn, that the playscript has an intermediary position between the “plot” level and the “performance” level, and that the playscript already incorporates the performative potential of the play (362). In her model Fludernik is dealing with both playscript and performance. She also elaborates on the reading procedure of a playscript and states: “In reading a play, we imaginatively ‘stage’ it in our minds…. owing to the explicit staging information in the stage directions – it involves more visualization than does novel reading” (363). This is quite interesting since not only does she make an immediate comparison between reading a playscript and a novel but she also touches upon an important criterion of the playscript and the stage directions: their narrative function. Though I am not sure if we can so readily argue that every playscript involves more visualisation than every novel, I would say it depends very much on the (quantity and narrative quality of) stage directions and the descriptive quality of the narrative in the novel. The statement is, nevertheless, of immense value. Fludernik is pointing out an issue that not many theorists have tackled; a reverse argument one could say that of how much performative quality a novel does have. She asks, once we see novel and drama as similar and consider both as narratives, whether we could compare narrative elements in drama and novel. Could we argue in the same way about narrativity in drama as we do in novels, and could we do the same to novels and discuss the dramatic level or even the performative ←62 | 63→aspects in a novel or other types of narratives as well? These questions help us see a more complete definition of narrative fiction which does not limit itself to generic differences.

      For the purpose of this study I have chosen (textual) narratives. To qualify as such, they must consist of fictional worlds, storyworlds that inhabit at least one human (-like) consciousness that experiences in some way that storyworld. As I mentioned before I maintain that there is a niche for a narratological model focusing on playscripts. I believe cognitive narrative theory can provide very good analytical toolkits which one can apply to playscripts. The analysis of playscript independent from the performance is a valid endeavour. Jahn’s introductory work of written/printed vs performed and assigning separate categories for both scripts and performances already pave the way for a narratological model of drama. In this work, then, I would like to propose one such model. The model I am proposing is concerned with playscripts only. All the theory and concepts I will be using are taken from cognitive narrative studies, mainly following the approach Palmer suggests. For reasons of space, as already discussed in the introduction, my focus will be on Palmer’s theoretical framework to trace the construction of the fictional minds in the plays of Ibsen, Wilde and Shaw. After examining the construction of the characters’ consciousness in different narrative parts of the playscripts regarding their intramental relevance (in Chapters Four and Five), I will analyse the intermental dynamics between the characters (Chapters Six–Eight). Using Palmer’s concept of intermentality I will find collective minds at work in the plays and determine the dynamics of group formation. Before the analysis of the playscripts, I would like to elaborate on some major concepts of drama especially in relation to narrative studies in the next chapter. I will first explain how the concept of characterisation has been developed in narrative studies so far. Then I will move on to explain what existing theories have to say about character and consciousness in the embedded and doubly embedded parts of the playscript, and also in the stage directions. I will point out how these approaches can benefit immensely by applying Palmer’s approach of consciousness construction and intermentality to consequently achieve a better and richer reading experience of the playscripts.

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14 See Culler (1975).

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