Finding Spirituality: a critical revaluation of English drama since 1935 through the medium of the dramatic text.
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O'Shaughnessy, Christopher. 2024. Finding Spirituality: a critical revaluation of English drama since 1935 through the medium of the dramatic text.. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (Finding Spirituality: a critical revaluation of English drama since 1935 through the medium of the dramatic text.)
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Abstract or Description
This thesis argues that spirituality can be found, identified and categorized in the medium of the dramatic text.
The process of finding involved the creation of a methodology from the self-aware practice of writing two new plays, The Ruth Ellis Show and Servants, exploring these single-authored texts to uncover new emergent spiritualities and to apply this analytical methodology to the affective scrutiny and evaluation of known and published dramatic texts by T.S. Eliot, Christopher Fry, Edward Bond, Peter Shaffer, Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane.
Vibrant areas of text where spirituality operates in various forms and registers were found, categorized and identified. Nine more categories from the study of the eight very different canonical texts—Murder in the Cathedral, The Lady’s Not for Burning, Saved, Equus, Top Girls, Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis—were added to the nine original practice findings. The methodology is predicated on the concept of spirituality as the human urge towards transcendence.
Contextualising the research within a multi-faceted approach to spirituality, regarded as appropriate to a study of English drama since 1935, the year of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, the thesis is underpinned by Julia Kristeva’s language theories regarding the spiritual, particularly theories of the semiotic subverting the symbolic and affording pluralities of meaning, the creative potentiality of abjection and the musicalisation of language. Taking note of the historical setting of each dramatic work, including those of practice, an argument is made that the work of the six chosen canonical dramatists, and my own creative practice, provides textual evidence of a post-war social trend in Britain, identified by sociologists Grace Davie, Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, that spirituality animated in English drama during this period functions mainly on a non-religious, hybrid spectrum and in doing so extends our understanding of the complexities of dramatic composition.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
spirituality, Julia Kristeva, dramatic text, playwriting |
| Departments, Centres and Research Units: |
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| Date: |
30 April 2024 |
| Item ID: |
36348 |
| Date Deposited: |
16 May 2024 16:14 |
| Last Modified: |
16 May 2024 16:14 |
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URI: |
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