| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 106 === The British playwright, Sarah Kane (1971-1999), makes her name for the extreme presentation of profaning violence in her plays, but at the same time, the redemptive air can always be felt at the end of her works. This fusion of profanation and redemption is not only the unique mark of Kane’s words in the theatrical world, but also the key mystery waiting to be deciphered for her plays to be understood well. Kane once said that her characteristic and thought were always under the struggle between her childhood Christian belief, and her adult thinking beyond Christianity, and that is, the struggle between the belief that human beings are destined to be saved, and the thinking that human beings are doomed to face their hopeless decease. For Kane’s relation with Christianity as well as some clear Christian allusions Kane makes in her plays, the thesis would aim to argue that through presenting the most profaning cruelty, Kane’s works, as Christ’s crucifixion, really aim to point out the way toward redemption of the human.
For proving the argument, the thesis would analyze two of Kane’s five plays, Blasted (1995) and Cleansed (1998), in detail for they reveal Kane’s original ideas more effectively and clearly than her other works. Besides, the thesis would use
Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical theory as the main approach since Agamben does not only argue that the human really live as the forsaken in the human society, but also talks about the way for the human to be freed from this forsakenness. Therefore, Agamben’s theory would be applied to analyze both Kane’s words, and Christ’s crucifixion in order to build up the relation between them. The thesis would point out first that Kane’s characters are treated inhumanly since being human itself is doomed to cause one’s own dehumanization. Then, the thesis would discuss how Christ redeems his life by laying down his human existence, and destituting himself from the human world. Finally, the dialogues between Christ’s journey toward redemption and Kane’s lines would be built with the aid of Agamben’s theory. So the thesis can conclude at the end that the merciless violence in Kane’s words truly leads to the similar end as the bloodshed on the cross.
|
|---|
