2017, Vol.30, No.3

Journal of Modern English Drama 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.11

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

Since the 9/11 attacks, in the U.S., Islamophobia and discriminating racialization against Muslims and Southwest Asians have been reinforced. Ayard Akhtar, a Pakistani American playwright, in his Pulitzer Prize winning play Digraced, studies the reinforced anti-Muslimist racialization after the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. In the play, the two Pakistani American male characters, Amir and Abe, have at first tried to assimilate themselves to the mainstream American society and culture in order to evade the prejudice and discrimination against them from the mainstream American people. However, rather than successfully incorporating themselves into the mainstream American society and culture, they have been forced to stay out of the mainstream American society and culture and to live as religious and racial other in the U.S. because of the reinforced Islamophobia and racialization against Muslims and Southwest Asians in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. Therefore, given the fact that their assimilationist efforts have eventually failed, the two Pakistani American characters begin to understand that their current hardships are connected to their own colonial history. Thus, they come to realize the fact that if they want to fight back they must construct their true post-colonial identity, and rediscover their own religious and cultural values as Muslims. Overall, the play could work as a warning to the on-going trend of Islamophobia and racializaion against Muslims and Southwest Asians in the U.S.

The aim of this paper is to study the political ideals and limitations of Russian intelligentsia in the 19th century, centering on Tom Stoppard’s trilogy The Coast of Utopia. The Russian intelligentsia was armed with Western enlightenment ideals and aimed at liberating peasants from serfdom and tyranny and transforming Russia from a structural point of view. Being a thinker who inspired Stoppard to write this trilogy, Alexander Herzen is at the center of The Coast of Utopia. Chapter 2 analyzes the situation of the 19th century Russia, described in the first play Voyage. It also includes a grasp of the Russian manor system and the serfdom system under the Tsarist regime. The serfdom system in the 19th century Russia is an important basis for explaining the structural problems of the Russian society, such as the underdevelopment of capitalist production system, the backwardness in modern industrial development, and the absence of the citizen class. Chapter 3 focuses on the exchange of thoughts among Herzen and other intelligentsia, who had left their own countries and lived in Europe. In particular, I would like to discuss how the failure of the French Revolution of 1848 influenced Herzen’s ideological journey. Chapter 4 deals with Herzen’s life in exile in the UK, his Free Russia publishing activities, and the disagreement with the ’60s Russian political theorists. Herzen perceived the communistic elements, such as the principle of collective production and distribution, the centralization of power, and the negation of private property system, as monolithic, repressive and barbaric elements. Herzen, as well as Stankevich and Turgenev, all of whom are noble intelligentsia, was unable to sympathize with the radical ideas of communism. However, the Russian intelligentsia in 1840-50s became a good foundation for the birth of a new generation of the 1860s and further laid the foundation of the Russian communist revolution in the early 20th century. Through the trilogy, Stoppard tries to shape a new perspective on the 19th century Russian intelligentsia, especially on Herzen. The Russian intelligentsia he depicted is a “noble” human race that chose to liberate peasants and reform the repressive Tsarist system rather than live comfortably in their own identity and property. Furthermore, Stoppard grants a keen perception to Herzen who grasped the limits of the monolithic and repressive communist revolution.

At first sight, Albert’s Bridge(1967) seems like a loosely constructed unrealistic radio drama. However, if we understand Albert as a sort of artist figure and the whole play as ‘a portrait of an artist’, it suddenly looks like a play of consistent themes and structure, as in the case of Lord Malquist and Mr Moon, Stoppard’s only novel so far, where Mr. Moon plays the role of a thinly-veiled writer figure. Albert’s death with the collapse of the Clufton Bay Bridge seems to be the logical conclusion of his failure both as a man and as an artist in that entrapped in the chaos of the realities, he cannot make any meaningful artistic achievement. The Real Inspector Hound(1968), while parodying Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, successfully combines various dramatic devices which are vital in making so-called Stoppardian ‘comedy of ideas’. The setting of two theater critics being drawn into the inner play they are watching seems to be particularly original and effective, making The Real Inspector Hound quite a unique metadramatic work. It is not certain whether Stoppard indeed had the intention of writing metadramas, but these two Stoppard’s early works characteristically show metadramatic self-reflexive or self-conscious aspects. Even so, these two works are not entirely cut off from the realities. A drama work inevitably gets involved in the realities when and where it is created, Albert’s Bridge and The Real Inspector Hound being no exceptions. It is only that these two works, foregrounding such issues as the relationship between reality and illusion, and the theatricality of the theater, interestingly suggest to the audience that some drama works should be approached from a new perspective rather than from that of traditional realism.