Antigone on the African Stage [Book Chapter].pdf

Re-Entering Old Spaces

Re-Entering Old Spaces:

Essays on Anglo-American Literature

Edited by

Marija Krivokapić and Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević

Re-Entering Old Spaces: Essays on Anglo-American Literature Edited by Marija Krivokapić and Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević This book first published 2016 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2016 by Marija Krivokapić, Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-9044-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9044-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Marija Krivokapić and Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević Beyond “the Myth of the Garden” and Turner’s Thesis .............................. 9 Artur Jaupaj Re-Visiting Walden in the Light of H. Daniel Peck’s “The Worlding of Walden” ................................................................................................. 31 Božica Jović Metamorphoses of the Devil in the Works of Percy and Mary Shelley ..... 41 Giuseppe Barbuscia Counterparts and Counterpoints in the Poetry of the Great War ............... 65 Denis Kuzmanović Degradation of the Human Soul in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot ..................... 87 Tomislav Kuna Defamiliarization Revisited ..................................................................... 105 Robert Sullivan Narcissistic Religiosity in Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry ...................... 115 Janko Andrijašević Revisiting Old Texts as a Form of New Beginnings for the Author of Ulysses ................................................................................................ 141 Vanja Vukićević Garić Lawrence and Bataille: The Notion of Sacrifice and Violence in “The Woman Who Rode Away” ......................................................... 151 Nina Haritatou Re-Enactment of Old Wounds: Hemingway, War and Gender ............... 163 Aleksandra Žeželj Kocić

Table of Contents

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Re-Entering Totalitarian Hell in Twentieth-Century Literature: The Allegories of Power and Dehumanization in George Orwell’s 1984 and Ismail Kadare’s The Palace of Dreams ................................... 187 Bavjola Shatro Violence and Evil in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies ...................... 209 Loran Gami Revisiting Spaces over Time ................................................................... 223 Aleksandra V. Jovanović Measure for Measure as an Expression of Growing Uncertainty towards Monarchy and the Divine Order ................................................ 237 Branko Marijanović Antigone on the African Stage ................................................................. 257 Salih M. Hameed and Raad Kareem Abd-Aun Contemporary Studies of Travel Writing ................................................ 279 Olivera Popović “The Old is Better than Any Novelty”: Literary Venice ......................... 295 Ilda Erkoçi Notes on Contributors .............................................................................. 309 Index ........................................................................................................ 315

ANTIGONE ON THE AFRICAN STAGE

SALIH M. HAMEED AND RAAD KAREEM ABD-AUN

The prologue to this paper is inspired by Prof. Robert Sullivan’s presentation of his article “The Concept of ‘De-familiarization’ Revisited.”1 Indeed, we as readers/audience of Antigone underwent a process of familiarization in both the theme/cultural space of the dramatic technicalities In the African Antigones, African dramatists exercised a process of “de-familiarization” when the Greek form/content aspects are fully “transformed” thematically and dramatically. Upon re-entering the Antigone world, we, in fact, experiment a new experience of “re-familiarization” enhanced by the African re-entering of the Antigone myth. Hence, our re-visit is practically a process of “re-re-entry.”

The African dramatists, whose plays are examined in this paper, re-entered the African myth afresh in the middle of and late in the twentieth century. As critics, we have noticed that their re-entry is two-layered: the “protest” theme is contemporarily employed to touch upon political and postcolonial issues resulting from their colonizers’ ill treatment or postcolonial rules. In the field of technique, the African playwrights re-entered the “sphere” of dramatic technicalities available by the time, making a “blend” of techniques that would help their “re-visits.” From Pirandello, they reformulated the “illusion vs. reality” approach, and from Brecht they reshaped the Alienation effect using it as a means of agitation, hence the “agitprop” technique, let alone the Absurdist’s technicalities of drama. This “blend” of such techniques helps much the process of de-familiarization in search of “recognition” of the African continent in a time of crisis.

1 Delivered on Oct. 2nd, 2014 during the proceedings of the X International Conference on English Language and Literary Studies, University of Montenegro, Montenegro.

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Aesthetically and intellectually, life is centered around re-entering old spaces.2 In The Second Shepherds Play, for instance, the Nativity story is re-entered. Chaucer re-enters the story of Troilus and Cressida in his Canterbury Tales, and in Dr. Faustus, Marlowe re-enters the folk legend of Faust in the Faustbuch. Shakespeare’s plays are almost all re-enterings of old spaces. Dryden re-enters Homer’s epics, and Tennyson does so with the Arthurian legends in The Idylls of the King. When Pound and Eliot met, they decided to re-enter the Jamesian novel and use in their poetry its depiction of the cultural shock an American feels in Europe, and similarly, Hughes re-enters Native American shamanism and folklore in his poetry. And last but indeed not least, war is re-entered throughout human history, each time the whole experience and its expression change. It is like looking through a very transparent thin lightly tinted glass adding layer after layer every time we look at the familiar, de-familiarizing it.

African playwrights, however, are not an exception; they have re-entered the Antigone myth and re-formulated it anew to correspond to their intentions. Thematically, they have wisely realized that the ancient myth would vitally function to serve the treatment of serious problems. Equally interesting, the African playwrights are familiar with the roles drama can play in reshaping ill contemporary issues. Nonetheless, these dramatists are quite aware that the intimate relation between drama and man’s intellectual and socio-political domains is deeply dated back to the Greek times where drama was born, and then nurtured in the cradle of the church in medieval Europe. Since then, the intimacy has been growing more potential continuously adapting techniques and approaches that correspond to the necessities required for theme treatment. Indeed, the wake of the twentieth century witnessed a time that was not entirely friendly to arts and personal development. The youth was confronted by a disastrous experience—World War I either froze or prevented experimentation in drama, giving way to “drawing room plays,” which Erwin Piscator believes to have been staged “mainly for commercial reasons.”3

The catastrophic scene of almost fifteen million killed, more millions seriously injured, and more dozens of millions on the march for unknown territories, normally cannot (and might not) encourage people (and by no means artists as well) but to tune their interests simply to the 2 Aleksandar Jerkov, “Re-entering Old Forms of Literature,” paper presented on Oct. 2nd, 2014 during the proceedings of the X International Conference on English Language and Literary Studies, University of Montenegro, Montenegro. 3 Erwin Piscator, The Political Stage, translated by Hugh Rorrison (London: Eyre Methuen, 1963), 8.

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calls of the war, at least initially for the early years of its wake. Besides, the sweeping destruction of the world wars has not fully paralyzed the “role” of arts and artists in making life. The Sisyphean spirit of arts has revived out of the ashes of the wars, and the theatre has steadily restored its main message; this time under the very impact of the war conditions and its aftermath. As the war resulted in a sharp split in political systems and philosophies, the arts has also undergone a similar transformation. Such a new “slogan” as “art for the people” soon emerged not to indicate “the abandonment of the bourgeois intellectual position” but the opinion that the concept is “left quite intact,”4 it is not having been concerned with the problem as much as it is with the form. The post-war mood of the 1920’s did not seem mature enough to employ drama as a political tool in the service of political debate or argument. The need for a “vehicle” to effectively live up to the “subject” encouraged dramatists all over the world to seek literary trends that aptly and potentially embody the crises the wars had brought.

It seems that in 1921, Luigi Pirandello paved the way for the Absurdists in the pointlessness of man’s life and fruitlessness of human endeavour, through his view of the similitude of theatre of life; hence, the overlap of “illusion” and “reality.” Despite its potential influence on world repute, Six Characters in Search of an Author hardly undertakes to treat directly the crises of human existence resulting from the war years. However, this is not, and ought not to be considered, a demerit of the work, because if the play’s graces are rendered into a mere political orientation, it is, therefore, some “violence to that which distinguishes it as art, the uniqueness of its form.”5 Indeed, it is a fallacy to assume that the worth of a work of art exclusively rests on its author’s potential ideology: what significantly matters is “the degree to which the intention of the artist enables him to see beyond the ideological perception of the world which provides his stimulus.”6 It is, however, the power that transcends the ideological statement; since the playwright is endowed with the insight to foresee beyond such statements. Such creative employment has been inspiringly exercised by Brecht and the Brechtians, where the theatre is vitally transformed into a lecture hall, wherein the “people” are not stuffed with “empty” slogans but agitated to take “action.”

Brecht’s dramatic technicalities of theatric orientation have exercised a stimulating influence on the world post-war drama. Both 4 Ibid., 31. 5 Julian H. Wulbern, Brecht and Ionesco: Commitment in Context (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1971), 10. 6 Ibid., 99.


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Brecht’s subtle didacticism and direct agitational address are vital in the treatment of man’s helplessness against aggressive institutions. Brecht always displays that the individual is helpless in this conflict if he is not endowed with the demand of his own spirit; i.e. unless he is able to meet the requirements of the challenge. Epic dramatists have basically made use of Brecht’s principles which Martin Esslin finds “neither very complicated not very new” although he acknowledges Brecht’s impact on “present-day theatre.”7 The playwrights who are advocates of Epic Theatre have widely adopted Brecht’s principles, which simply rest on the idea that “the audience is to be confronted with a body of evidence from which it is to draw its conclusions in a critical, highly lucid state of mind.”8

It is this intention, however, that the African playwrights have adapted when drawing upon the Antigone myth. They have endeavoured to explicate the extents to which this story can be employed to critically serve the treatment of problems of African life. Besides, the wide and popular implications of the story, which is already known to the audience, the African dramatists have equally drawn upon both theatricalities of world drama and African local colourings, which the playwrights strongly tend to emphasize. It is, however, part of the playwrights’ interest in their identity that they always foreground the African cultural and national frames of mind as well as their people’s socio-political and intellectual crises.

However, re-entering the old space of the canonical Antigone of Sophocles by postcolonial dramatists acquires more subtle nuances. Helen Tiffin terms the reworking of canonical literary works of the imperial center by the post/colonized periphery “canonical counter-discourse.”9 According to Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, “counter-discourse actively works to destabilise the power structures of the originary text rather than simply to acknowledge its influence.”10 They also assert that

drama is particularly suited to counter-discursive intervention and equally useful for its expression, since performance itself replays an originary moment. […] Thus counter-discourse is

7 Martin Esslin, A Choice of Evils (London: Eyre Methuen, 1977), 110. 8 Ibid., 209. 9 Helen Tiffin, “Post-Colonial Literatures and Counter-discourse,” in The Post-colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 97. 10 Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 16.


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always possible in the theatrical presentation of a canonical text, and even expected in some cases.11 The first (and probably the earliest) of the selected canonical

counter-discursive re-enterings of the Antigone of Sophocles is Odale’s Choice, written by Edward Brathwaite (first performed 1962). Brathwaite

retains central elements from Sophocles, but he cut out what might be described as the romantic dimension (sometimes seen as resisting easy transplantation), simplified the issues of conduct, and skillfully exploited opportunities for the incorporation of local performance traditions.12

The playwright intended his play to be modernized, but not to belong to a specific time, and localized in Africa, but not to one particular country. However, James Gibbs suggests that Brathwaite was not completely successful. The names of Odale and her sister, certain issues related to the social system reflected in the play, and certain Creole phrases used by the soldiers, tend to place the play in one country, rather than another.13 However, Gibbs tries to defend Brathwaite when he contests that the playwright

cultivated the confusion of different popular usages in order to work against too precise a location. If this is the case, the pidgin becomes an honest reflection of the play’s destination and origin: it is for Ghana, and about Ghana, but also part of the process by which a Caribbean poet found his voice.14

As sound as this justification might seem, Braithwaite seemed to have been confused and failed the attempt to universalize the play.

However, the most notable difference between the Greek original and Braithwaite’s version lies in the last scene when Odale (Antigone) and Creon face each other at the end of the play.15 When Creon attempts to

11 Ibid., 18. 12James Gibbs, Nkyin-Kyin, Essays on the Ghanaian Theatre (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009), 43. 13 James Gibbs, op. cit., 44-45. 14 Ibid., 45. 15 Elisabetta Forin, “Antigone in Anglophone African Literature,” Unpublished MA thesis, University of Padua, 44, (retrieved 4/11/2014) tesi.cab.unipd.it/43948/1/2013_Forin_Elisabetta.pdf.


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begin his interrogation of Odale, and hence initiate the agony as in the Greek original, Odale simply says that such an interrogation is needless:16

ODALE (Quietly) Uncle, why do you trouble yourself? Why do you bother to question me? You know very well what I went for and what I was doing, when I went out there alone, in the night. (The enormity of what she is saying is beginning to dawn on Creon.) CREON What! What child! What are you saying? ODALE I am saying, my lord, that I went out to do what you knew I would do; what I had to do; what it was my duty to do.17

This undermines Creon’s legitimacy, unlike the original play.18

The chorus intervenes to save Odale and Creon grants her pardon, which she refuses. Her refusal is a choice identical to her decision to break Creon’s laws and uphold those of the gods:

ODALE Because, my lord, there is a greater law. Greater than yours and all the priests’ and judges’. And that law says that the living must bury their dead. He was my brother, if he wasn’t your nephew; and I should have fallen before my gods, if I had scorned that law. CREON So you mean you chose19

Creon is infuriated by her refusal of his pardon, and she trades parts with her dead brother to become the public spectacle. With this, Odale’s Choice not only replaces the sister for the brother, but also denies any relation to all versions of Oedipal aggression, thus setting itself apart from the Greek original.20 The play speaks forcibly as a canonical counter-discourse disconnecting itself from its Greek roots to forcefully plant itself in Western African soil interrogating not only Odale’s power of choice and sovereignty over the play as she strides along at the end of the play 16 James Gibbs, op. cit., 45. 17 Edward Brathwaite, Odale’s Choice (Ibadan: Evans Brothers, 1967), 25-26. All further quotations are from this edition and will be given parenthetically henceforward. 18 Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson, Crossroads in the Black Aegean: Oedipus, Antigone, and Dramas of the African Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 222. 19 Ibid., 28. 20 Ibid., 228.


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declaring, “Of my own free will, I will go!”21, but also the Greek original which was long claimed by the colonial master to be a masterpiece.

Antigone in Haiti by Felix Morisseau-Leroy (first performed 1963) was written in Ghana after the playwright departed into exile to Haiti in 1959. It was one of the first things he did while there and was “a revealing choice for a newly arrived political exile.”22 His play was not written in French (originally it was written in Creole, the language of the periphery, and not French, the language of the colonial centre); it featured gods that were neither Greek nor Catholic but rather Vodou. Thus, Antigone becomes Haitian and not Greek, hence removing the canonical text from the centre to the periphery creating a canonical counter-discourse.23

Morisseau-Leroy believes that Haiti has a popular theatre that could serve as a counter-movement to the Eurocentric theatre of the colonizer. This theatre is Vodou as he states: “the peristil where Vodou ceremonies take place is also a theatre stage where a perfect spectacle takes place.”24 Morisseau-Leroy attempts not to adapt the play, but rather “rewrite Sophocles from a Haitian point of view.”25 He considers Vodou to be inscribed in “the social praxis” of its people; it could “turn forms of oppression into a struggle for liberation.”26

The play begins with a prologue which explains what the playwright did to change the play and remove from the Eurocentric sphere:

The tale is unchanged. But we add to the story that came to us The salt and the sun The sun and the saviour of Africa Or the isle of Haiti.

21 Ibid., 32. 22 Gibbs, op. cit., 26. 23 Moira Fradinger, “Danbala’s Daughter: Felix Morisseau-Leroy’s Antigòn an Kreyòl,” in Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage, edited by Erin B. Mee and Helene P. Foley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 129. 24 Felix Morisseau-Leroy, “Plaidoyer pour un theatre en creole,” Panorama, Port au Prince (June 1950), in Fradinger, 133. 25 Judy Cantor, “The Voice of Haiti,” Miami New Times (May 2, 1996) http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1996-05-02/news/the-voice-of-haiti/full/, accessed November 7, 2014. 26 Moira Fradinger, op. cit., 134.


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We add gods. African gods.27 Then the chorus says that the story could happen wherever there is a “girl/ Antigone who says ‘no’” and a “chief who rules,” “a master who’ll not head advice.”28 After establishing the universality of the play and explaining that the plot, which is largely similar to the Greek tragedy, the playwright opens the play with a very emphatic “No.”29

Antigone refuses to be accompanied by her sister Ismene, who seeks the help of their Grand-Aunt through making a “joujou.”30 The Grand-Aunt commences with the ceremony skipping the song and incantation that precede the Vodou ceremony due to the urgency of the matter. Papa Legba answers but says that he cannot help in this matter:

Priestess, child of mine you know I’d do all in my power for a child of dead king Oedipus. But here there is nothing, nothing nothing worth while [sic] I can do.31

Antigone is abandoned by the gods in a series of abandonments in the play. Papa Legba’s absence signifies a break between the world of the spirit of the ancestors and Creon’s house.32

The two women rush inside as Creon and Tiresias enter. The seer tries to warn Creon against his decision not to bury Polynices. Creon, however, is angry at Tiresias’s intervention. The latter leaves saying: “But pay heed to what I say.”33 However, upon seeing the materials used by Grand-Aunt, he asks Tiresias because he wants to know “what the gods have inside it.”34 The tone of sarcasm is clear in Creon’s voice. However, what is said to him is not funny at all.

Tiresias calls upon Madam Erzuli to tell Creon “what is happening in Thebes.”35 The goddess herself repeats Tiresias’s warning

27 Felix Morisseau-Leroy, “Antigone in Haiti” (unpublished typescript), 2. All further quotations are from this edition and will be given parenthetically henceforward. 28 Ibid., 3. 29 Ibid., 4. 30 Ibid., 6. 31 Ibid. 32 Moira Fradinger, op. cit., 137. 33 Felix Morisseau-Leroy, “Antigone in Haiti,” 8. 34 Ibid., 9. 35 Ibid.


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and foretells the same disasters the latter does. She tells Tiresias not to call her again “for somebody who won’t listen.”36 This is the second time the gods abandon the house of Oedipus.37 Creon is not happy with what he hears and blames the gods for it:

Where were the spirits of our ancestors when all of us in Thebes were all fighting each other? Why didn’t Madam Erzuli take Polynices by the hand and drag him away from his country’s enemies?38

Filo, Creon’s counselor, tells Creon that Antigone buried her brother Polynices. The account of the burial and the circumstances around it are supernatural. There is wind, rain, lightning and dust, but not around the body nor around Antigone. A grave is dug and covered by itself. When Antigone comes, she tells Creon that she buried her brother. He tries to talk to her, but she insists on defying him. He sends her to prison, only to be confronted by his son, Hemon. His son, too, turns against him and leaves him with fair warning: “King Creon, I am leaving you to your darkness. I am going where there is light. God has turned his back on you, King Creon. The spirits have turned their backs on you.”39

This infuriates Creon who summons Secle-Quitte, guardian of the dead, to turn Antigone into a zombie by killing her soul. He summons her soul into a glass of water, which turns red when he stabs it with a knife. Tiresias enters declaring that the gods have abandoned Creon, because they have not allowed him to do so, and are not with him as he claims. Moira Fradinger suggests that Creon’s act is a “metaphor of national consciousness: it represents the complete loss of will on the part of the slave; it is a body whose soul has been robbed with black magic and can be used to serve a human master.”40 Antigone’s “No,” which opens the play, is everything the Haitian revolution stands for41; it is the will to stand in the face of tyranny which Creon wants to usurp.

To prove that the gods are on his side, Creon asks Tiresias to call Damballa. Damballa does not appear, which is another abandonment by the gods.42 Morisseau-Leroy says that “Damballah didn’t come because

36 Ibid., 10. 37 Ibid., 139. 38 Ibid., 10-11. 39 Ibid., 17. 40 Moira Fradinger, op. cit., 141. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 142.


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Damballah didn’t approve of [Creon’s] political action. Damballah didn’t come because he was on the side of Antigone.”43 Fardinger suggests that the climactic point when Creon realizes the catastrophe that befalls him coincides with the most climactic point in a Vodou ceremony, the crisis of possession, “the most emblematic moment of the intimate relation between Vodou and theatrical performance.”44 Grand-Aunt comes in possessed by Erzuli and tells Tiresias to summon dead Antigone to stop Hemon from dying. Tiresias summons Antigone and along her voice he hears Hemon saying “Antigone, give me your hand to cross over.”45 Hemon is dead but there is still another calamity to befall Creon. His wife kills herself after she hears the news of Antigone’s and Hemon’s death.

Creon prohibits crying and the final words in the play are Filo’s acceptance of the order: “Yes, King Creon.”46 Filo’s final bow is in sharp contrast to Antigone’s initial refusal.

The tragic spirit of the play is not Antigòn’s death: she lives eternally as a Haitian ancestor. Rather, the tragedy is obedience to all that stands opposed to Antigòn’s rebellion—an obedience to a new form of slavery.47

The play makes the elite culture legitimate to the peasants, and

vice versa, in Haiti. Elsewhere, it is a far cry against tyranny and usurpation of will. It is also a strong counter-discourse that reinterprets, re-enters, a western canonical text in the light of Vodou, the culture of the periphery, bringing that culture to center in the process, and wedding the western theatre and performance tradition to that of Haiti and Africa.

Athol Fugard’s The Island (devised with John Kani and Winston Ntshona) belongs to the category of plays which recall not only ancient Antigone’s myth but the Pirandello technique and theatricality. The Island’s two actors-characters are presented in a cell on Robin Island engaging in a Vladimir-Estragon-like dialogue, which they describe as “nonsense”48 that equally recalls Waiting for Godot (it is most likely that Fugard had in mind the American San Francisco director who risked

43 Felix Morisseau-Leroy, untitled, Callaloo 15: no. 3 (Summer, 1992), 669. 44 Moira Fradinger, op. cit., 141-142. 45 Felix Morisseau-Leroy, op. cit., 20. 46 Ibid., 21. 47 Ibid., 143. 48 Athol Fugard, Township Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 198. All further quotations are from this edition and will be given parenthetically henceforward.


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presenting Waiting for Godot in the famous city prison of the state). John and Winston argue about Antigone’s necklace and reflect: “There’s six days to go to the concert. We’re committed. We promised the chaps we’d do something. This Antigone is just right for us. Six more days and we’ll make it”49 (emphasis edited). It is believed that the recurrent reference to the number “six” cannot be arbitrary, nor is the statement of Antigone being “right” for the prisoners. Fugard’s setting of the play is the notorious apartheid-era South African prison island, Robin Island, where most African political prisoners were held or banished is a factual reminder for the audience of the time of the African’s struggle and resistance for equality and independence. Hence, the potential theme of the play.

The Island is, however, a perfect embodiment of the African implication of the myth politically; for the devisers use theatricality to express the themes of the play; however, taking the Antigone myth to a whole new level of adaptation. It has its origin in acting exercises. These seem to begin, as Fugard’s Notebooks affirm, in the form of an image that grows in his consciousness and is then transmitted to the actors with whom he works so intimately,50 namely Winston Ntshona and John Kani who gave their names to the characters.

The play begins with a Sisyphean prologue showing the prisoners shoveling sand into a wheelbarrow to fill another prisoner’s hole. This is meant to break the prisoners’ spirit. The whistle blows and the shackled men are taken into their cell.

The play centers on John and Winston’s plan to act Antigone before the other prisoners and wardens. Like Kani, and Ntshona—who collaborated with Fugard when he wrote The Island—“the prisoners are not merely actors but playwrights. They forge drama, an art that is an affirmation of their humanity.”51 They ensure their survival through acting. Fugard has chosen the Antigone myth because it represents protest,52 and in the play the boundaries between myth, life, and theatre are shattered.

The surprising news set the two prisoners against each other. John is told that his appeal was approved and his sentence is reduced to three years and that he will be released within three months. Winston is sad,

49 Athol Fugard, The Island, in Township Plays, 199. 50 Athol Fugard, Plays One (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), vii-viii, quoted in Albert Wertheim, The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 88. 51 Albert Wertheim, op. cit., 92. 52 Ibid., 94.


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angry and envious and the prospect of life imprisonment keeps darkening his eyes:

When you go to the quarry tomorrow, take a good look at old Harry. Look into his eyes, John. Look at his hands. They’ve changed him. They’ve turned him into stone. Watch him work with that chisel and hammer. Twenty perfect blocks of stone every day. Nobody else can do it like him. He loves stone. That’s why they’re nice to him. He’s forgotten himself. He’s forgotten everything […] why he’s here, where he comes from. That’s happening to me John. I’ve forgotten why I’m here.53

The myth of Sisyphus reappears as Winston sees in Harry a future image of himself.

The men bypass this and manage to present their play. In the prologue, John says: “Captain Prinsloo, Hodoshe, Warders, […] and Gentlemen!”54 Albert Wertheim argues

The pause indicated in the text of the first sentence […] pointedly endows the prisoners with gentility while separating them from the officials of oppressive state power. Furthermore, using the word “arrested” to describe Antigone’s situation raises the specter of the modern polity, and in particular the South African state. It is a word that succinctly captures the bond between the ancient Antigone legend and the events of contemporary history, fixing the Antigone story as a symbol for John and Winston’s plight as well as for all who protest and resist in South Africa. This is nicely and pointedly italicized when after his exposition of Antigone’s actions and subsequent arrest, John states that “that is why” they are presenting their play.55

The essence of The Island is contained between its absurd Sisyphean beginning and its glorious Sophoclean end, and it is concerned with the way in which the plight of Sisyphus can be connected with, and transformed into, the power of Antigone.56 Nevertheless, it is a subtle dramatic device to revive the African consciousness of the offense not of the “black” prisoners, but of the “white” warden; whence, historically, even the prisoners themselves were divided into three categories. It is, 53 Ibid., 220-221. 54 Ibid., 223. 55 Ibid., 97. 56 Ibid., 89-90.


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therefore, very functional that the play itself and the rehearsal are Antigone oriented. The call for the revival of genuine protest underlined by the Sisyphean image is still the main intention which is rendered into a motif in other African plays despite the variety of approaches and diversity of functions adopted to deal with this theme.

Femi Osofisan’s Tegonni: An African Antigone57 (performed 1994) is another example of such intentions. He uses the ancient Greek myth to comment on both postcolonial Nigeria and the then present Nigeria where military dictators thrive. Osofisan’s theatrical practice is characterized by a critical re-evaluation of the past,58 which explains setting the play in colonial Nigeria at the end of the 19th century, which is also an apt commentary on the present. Despite the acknowledged reliance on the ancient Greek version, the playwright also departs from the Antigone version. Dramatically, he introduces some “new characters” as well as experimenting “shifts in the plot”59 both of which contribute to the Africanization of the Greek myth to either denounce the colonial oppression or enhance postcolonial protest and resistance.

Osofisan changes certain elements in the plot so that he can better express his vision of the play. Unlike Creon, Carter-Ross, the colonial governor, is already in power and he is involved in the civil war, and is actively involved in sabotaging Tegonni’s marriage by placing her brother’s body in front of the palace. He dramatically applies the divide-and-rule strategy to pose his control.60 He represents both former colonial and present military despotism that storms Nigeria.61 The African Antigone fails Ross’s attempt to pose power, for Tegonni is present not only as an agent of resistance, but also as an agent of social change. By choosing to be a bronze caster, she defies male dominance over this profession helping other women become bronze casters. Astrid Van Weyenberg argues,

57 Femi Osofisan, Recent Outings: Tegonni, An African Antigone and Many Colors Make the Thunder-King (Ibadan, Nigeria: Opon Ifa Readers, 1999). 58 Astrid Van Weyenberg, “Revolutionary Muse: Femi Osofisan’s Tegonni: An African Antigone,” in Interrogating Antigone in Postmodern Philosophy and Criticism, edited by S. E. Wilmer and Audrone Zukauskaite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 368. 59 Barbara Goff, “Antigone’s Boat: The Colonial and the Postcolonial in Tegonni: An African Antigone by Femi Osofisan,” in Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds, edited by Lorna Hardwick and Carol Gillespie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 42. 60 Astrid Van Weyenberg, op. cit., 370. 61 Ibid.


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Osofisan not only offers a critique of the colonial, but also the post-colonial condition […] Showing the ways in which the past still haunts the present, Osofisan engages with problems that are painfully familiar to his contemporary Nigerian audience, thereby calling for their active engagement.62

In conclusion, both Astrid Van Weyenberg and Barbara Goff argue that Osofisan’s Tegonni

is already part of Africa. If we accept this reading, we can see that one important aspect of the play’s postcolonial politics is this over to erase Africa’s colonial history, by making Antigone into an African and subsuming her colonial lineage within her African identity. That she is indeed part of an indigenous tradition is asserted by the play’s title, or rather subtitle; ‘an’ African Antigone reminds us that this drama can acknowledge the plural parentage of Brathwaite and Fugard, as well as of Sophocles and Anouilh. Tegonni’s most postcolonial gesture, perhaps, is to make the colonial disappear.63

It is indeed an impressive treatment that the audience is made to be aware that the African Antigone is not a woman of ancient Greece arriving from a far-off distance of time and place as much as she is an African woman on African soil. In brief, she is Africa. It is, therefore, evident that the African playwrights already studied have formulated the Greek myth to underline their people’s revival and restoration of the “spirit” to resist colonizers or challenge tyrants and oppressors. Interestingly, they have genuinely sought world dramatic techniques that can make possible the achievement of their aims.

Sabata Sesiu’s Giants, written in 2000 and performed in 2001, is an interesting example of rich native African colourings and contemporary politico-feminist treaties. The play whose playwright labels it as inspired by Antigone and the Sotho legend of Hodhova, inter-relatedly combines the African traditions of music, dancing, mime, storytelling and scenes of dialogue to present a new contemporary version of Antigone. Besides the recurrent theme of “protest,” the play warns against the dangers of dictatorship and, by implication, commends the new South African constitution with its guarantee of freedom and equality for all citizens.64

62 Ibid., 370-371. 63 Ibid., 376; Goff, op. cit., 53. 64 B. van Zyl Smit, “The Reception of Greek Tragedy in the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ South Africa,” Akroterion 48 (2003), 16.


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The play is set in “rural Africa regardless of the period. The play takes place anywhere in Africa./ It does not matter whether it is the north, south, west, east or central Africa […] Anywhere in the world.”65 Dramatically, this statement graces the play with a universal label of the very time it focuses on its “Africanness”: the play can take place at anytime, anywhere in Africa. Hence, the African “identity.” Giants engages with the problems of African postcoloniality as they emerged throughout the continent after liberation: the tensions between tradition and modernity, customary and civic law are examined under the overarching question of the nature and form of leadership in the post- and neo-colonial Africa. The play explores issues of power and law, which make it directly relevant to the contradictions of the process of nation building that South Africa must face. Its rural setting implies that part of the contradictions in the process of nation building lies in the tension between customary and civic law, subjecthood and citizenship as sites of contrasting political traditions and practices that the nation building process must inevitably address if democracy is to be achieved.66

The playwright uses the same conflict between Nontombi (Antigone) and King Makhanda (Creon) and structures his play around it. The play opens in the cave of Shango with a song that forebodes death and destruction. Scene Two shows Nontombi and Asanti dreaming about their wedding. In Scene Three, Shango and the dancers tell the story of Nontombi’s two brothers, Sizwe and Sechaba, whose names mean nation in Xhosa and Zulu, and in Sotho and Tswana, respectively.67 Makhanda forbids the burial of Sizwe who was exiled and fought against him, while giving full honours to Sechaba who supported him. Noontombi attempts to bury her brother. She is captured and tortured. At the end of the play, in a late awakening and after the intervention of Shango, Makhanda goes to Nontombi’s cell to find her dead. His son kills himself; he receives news of his wife’s suicide as well. He is destroyed at the end of the play.

Sabata Sesiu, however, changes the tragedy to befit the South African postcolonial context. As Aktina Stathaki argues:

65 Sabata Sesiu, “Giants” (unpublished typescript). I would like to thank the playwright for providing me with a copy of the play. 66 M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press), 217, in Aktina Stathaki, “Adaptation and Performance of Greek Drama in Post-Apartheid South Africa” (unpublished thesis, University of Toronto, 2009), 204-205. 67 Zel Smit, op. cit., 17.


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There are two important interventions to the Sophoclean tragedy: firstly, Sabata presents Makhanda as an authoritarian African leader whose rule is from the beginning of the play illegitimate; secondly, he makes all his characters more directly complicit in Nontombi’s action diffusing resistance among all of them. These interventions must be explained under the light, on the one hand, of postcolonial issues of leadership and agency and, on the other hand, the characteristics of materialist tragedy which emerged in the African cultural discourse to address those political issues from a culturalist perspective.68

Makhanda and Creon have many similar characteristics: both mix their authority as males with that of the political leader and interpret the woman’s action as doubly transgressive not only to their civic but also to their gender roles; Makhanda too conflates the oikos with the polis viewing the city as an extension of the household and, therefore, his property to rule in any way he sees fit; even in his language Makhanda, like Creon, has a preference for the use of proverbs and generalized, simple, “universal” truths—characteristic of many contemporary totalitarian leaders.69 The first crucial difference between Giants and Antigone is that the former’s concern is not to show how the ruler risks becoming authoritarian, as in the case of Creon, but how he already is authoritarian and needs to change: Makhanda as the central tragic hero should be understood as a historical subject in the midst of social changes which he is unable to perceive.70

The first agent of resistance is, interestingly, the dead Sizwe. The symbolic function of his body and the significance of his burial must be understood first in the African cultural context where burying and honouring the dead is a duty and a benefit both for the living and the dead. Neglect or denial of burial is considered a punishment for both the dead and the living who will be haunted by the unburied ancestor.71

This context is echoed in Sabata’s politicization of Sizwe’s death. The play openly sides with the dead when it describes him as the freedom fighter that came to fight against Makhanda’s tyrannical laws. Sizwe fought against his own brother not for their own claims to power, as

68 Aktina Stathaki, op. cit., 221. 69 Mark Griffith, “Introduction” in Antigone, edited by Mark Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 36-37. 70 Aktina Stathaki, op. cit., 221-222. 71 Kevin J. Wetmore, Athenian Sun in An African Sky Modern African Adaptations of Classical Greek Tragedy (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: MacFarland, 2000), 176.


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Polyneikes and Eteocles, but for the sake of Makhanda. Their conflict then is, as in the case of the two sisters, an opposition imposed by the tyrannical state rather than being their own choice. In Giants then, although the dead body is the site of conflict between Nontombi and Makhanda as in Antigone, it acquires additional meanings. Because Sizwe in life was a direct threat to Makhanda’s rule his dead body acquires a symbolic significance: to acknowledge him in death would mean to acknowledge his opposition. Punishing him in death serves as a symbolic act of punishment for anyone who opposes him and acts as a reminder of the allegiances that the people are forced to make for or against the state. Sizwe is not an individual case but part of a continuum, one among many who fought against Makhanda and punishment is essential in suppressing those who will decide to follow him. To bury him would mean to restore his status as a citizen: as a dissident Sizwe was an exile in life and so he must remain in death.72

The dead body is further invested with an agency, as it constitutes a threat even after death: Sizwe’s body, like Polyneikes’, resists decomposition. While in Antigone this was a sign from the gods that Creon fails to see, here it suggests the continuity between the living and the dead and the ever-presence of what Sizwe stood for:

Shango: This is a miracle. Someone passing from a distance would bet on a calf That the body was asleep NOT DEAD Dancers: Beware Makhanda, Beware! The body is not dead The body is asleep Beware Makhanda beware! 73

It is the three women in the play, Nontombi, Nozizwe, and Wanjiru, as well as his son Asante, who will undertake the role to challenge Makhanda’s way of leadership and to try to fuse his governance with ethical qualities.74

In the confrontation between Makhanda and Nontombi, the authority of ancestral laws is placed against the arbitrariness of the Big Man’s decision-making authority. Makhanda is a tyrannical ruler, but with this decision against Sizwe he tests his subjects’ tolerance as he

72 Aktina Stathaki, op. cit., 231-232. 73 Ibid., 232. 74 Ibid., 233.


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transgresses not only human but also ancestral laws. Seen in the context of the illegitimacy of Makhanda’s rule, Nontombi’s defense of the ancestral laws does not take the form of a conflictual duty between city and family as it is for Antigone. Rather, it is the proposition of an altogether alternative form of understanding leadership: the ancestral laws become an expression of a democratic ideal and a means of legitimation of power.75 Furthermore, in her speech, given below, Nontombi distinguishes between the people and Makhanda, whereas Antigone distinguishes between respect for the gods or Creon:

Nont: You and I know that the heads would be used as a communication channel with the ancestral spirits. We both know that each child that is born in this country is named after the skull in the sacred caves […]. YOU are named after the skull in the head. Your spiritual welfare is safeguarded by the skulls in the sacred caves […] There are people like me out there, who are governed by laws such as this one and are prepared to defend them until the end. I would rather respect them than you. 76

Whereas Nonzizwe, Makhanda’s wife, uses her politics of compassion where human empathy coexists with the duties of statesmanship, Nontombi challenges Makhanda’s rule with tradition, and Asante challenges Makhanda directly with the principles of democracy forcefully defending the public will against his father’s authoritarian decision-making.77

At the end of the play, Makhanda is punished by the destruction of his family and the plunging of the city into chaos as the playwright warns against the inevitable chaos that awaits if things in the African postcolony do not change. But Nontombi, as well as everyone else who opposed him, suffers violence and death. However, this is not a punishment as much as it is a sacrifice that elevates the characters, particularly the females, to a symbolic status.78 Physically, death is destruction but not defeat. It is the spirit to protest that is kept alive and living: it is all Africans called upon to tread upon the right way of life and living, both under colonialism or postcolonialism.

75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 235. 77 Ibid., 236, 241. 78 Ibid., 243.


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Nonetheless, the plays already investigated are not the only African versions of the Greek myth. It is true that the Africanized Antigone plays show great ingenuity on the part of the playwrights in manipulating an ancient Greek text used by hegemonic imperialist powers to instill in the colonized the belief that Western literature is the zenith of human creativity in letters. By choosing Sophocles’ Antigone, the playwrights have re-entered an old space long canonized by the imperial West. By so doing, they created strong canonical counter-discourse to prove that Africa is capable of rivaling the West at its own game of theatre and performance, undermining suppositions of the supremacy of the canonical text, and thus undermining the very foundations of imperialism itself.

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1950). —. Untitled, Callaloo 15: no. 3 (Summer, 1992), 667-670. Osofisan, Femi. “Tegonni: An African Antigone.” In Recent Outings:

Tegonni, An African Antigone and Many Colors Make the Thunder-King. Ibadan, Nigeria: Opon Ifa Readers, 1999: 5-141.

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Apartheid South Africa.” Unpublished thesis, University of Toronto, 2009.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Raad Kareem ABD-AUN is a faculty member at the University of Babylon. He was awarded a Ph.D. in English Literature in 2011. He published several papers in Iraqi academic journals, as well as several poems in international print and electronic journals. His main research interest is postcolonial literature and literary theory. His publications include: The “Other” in Postcolonial Drama: A Comparative Study in Selected Postcolonial Plays in English and Arabic (book, 2014), several papers in Iraqi academic journals, as well as translations of several plays by American, European, and African playwrights. Janko ANDRIJAŠEVIĆ (b. 1971) graduated from the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić in 1995. He got his M.A. degree at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade in 2000. In 2005 he defended his doctoral dissertation on eclectic religion in Aldous Huxley’s prose at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad. Since 1995 he has been employed at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić. His research interests include: literature and psychology, psychology of religion, medical humanities. Giuseppe BARBUSCIA was born in Cesena (Italy) and completed his Master’s Degree in English and Spanish at the University of Catania (Italy). He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina). Ilda ERKOÇI is a lecturer at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra in Albania. After a Joint Master’s in Venice, she gained her Ph.D. at the University of Tirana with a dissertation on literary tourism. She likes to explore apparently uncommon links such as those between literature and geography or economy and has a special craving for interdisciplinary topics. Her major academic interests in addition to literary tourism include Sociolinguistics and translation studies.

Notes on Contributors

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Loran GAMI teaches British Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Tirana. His fields of interest include British and American literature, linguistics, and translation. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on the various aspects of Samuel Beckett’s aesthetics. He has published various articles on Samuel Beckett’s aesthetics, drama theory, and other twentieth-century British writers. His most recent publications deal with the work of William Golding and Graham Swift, focusing on the historical and the sociological aspects of these works. He has also taken part at a number of conferences focusing on literature, culture, and history. His academic experience includes a successful scholarship at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Salih Mahdi HAMEED is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Babylon. He considers himself an admirer of academic teaching and educational duties. Besides the forty-three years he has devoted to these tasks, he aspires to discover ways through which he keeps in touch with new findings in these fields. His publications include: I Will Go with the Church Against the King: A Study in the Beckett Plays (book, 2010), An Approach to Yusuf Sura as Drama (book, 2010), over 20 papers, as well as translations of several plays and other books. Nina HARITATOU has obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Newcastle University where she is a Staff Tutor at the Department of English Language and Literature. She has also studied Greek philosophy at the Athens University (first degree) and she has numerous publications in Greek, French, English and Australian scientific magazines. She is the author of the book English and American Literary Texts which is being taught to young (13-17 years old) learners of the English language in Greek public schools. Artur JAUPAJ holds a Ph.D. from Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey (2005) and has very recently been awarded the title of Associate Professor from the University of Tirana. A member of European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) and board member of the Albanian Society for the Study of English (ASSE), he has published extensively and delivered many papers on topics covering society, culture, and educational issues. He is also quite keen on matters related to Higher Education (HE) and the introduction of new technologies for educational purposes.

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Aleksandra V. JOVANOVIĆ graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and she gained MA and Ph.D. in English Literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. The title of her Ph.D. thesis is Greek Mythology in the Novels of John Fowles. Currently, she works at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology as an Associate Professor. Her research interests are mainly in the field of postmodern English and American novel. She writes essays and articles concerning modern British and American fiction. She also translates fiction from English, Spanish and Greek into Serbian. She has published two books: Nature, Mystery, Myth—the Novels of John Fowles and Voices and Silences. Apart from English she speaks Spanish and Greek. Božica JOVIĆ was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1976. She had her BA of Arts in English Literature at the University of East Sarajevo in 2001. She earned her MA in English Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2004. From 2005 till 2011 she worked as a Teaching Assistant at the English Department at the University of East Sarajevo. She had her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Belgrade in 2011. She is a Fulbright alumni, having spent nine months researching at the Fulbright School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Arkansas in 2009/2010. She currently holds the post of Assistant Professor of English and American Literature at the English Department of the University of East Sarajevo. She has also been engaged by the English Department at the University of Banja Luka to teach for three semesters in 2012/2013. Marija KRIVOKAPIĆ teaches 19th- and 20th-century British Literature at the Faculty of Philology, University of Montenegro. Her publications focus on the work on D. H. Lawrence (Lawrence in Italy, Belgrade 2000; Quest for the Transcendent in D. H. Lawrence’s Prose, Nikšić, 2009, as well as a dozen of other short publications), but her recent interest also include contemporary Native American literature (co-authored with Sanja Runtić, Suvremena književnost američkih starosjedilaca, Osijek, 2013), and travel writing. Together with Aleksandra Nikčević-Batrićević, she co-edited a series of monographs published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She edited and co-edited a series of translations of British, Canadian, South African, and Native American authors. She is the current general editor of linguistics and literature journal Folia linguistica et litteraria. She was a coordinator of an international project for the advancement of language studies, SEEPALS 2010-2013, financed by the European Commission. She has enjoyed Fulbright support for research in 2009 and 2015.


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Tomislav KUNA was born in Osijek in 1985. After completing his elementary and high school education in Valpovo, he enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy, at the University of Mostar in 2007 as a double major in English language and literature and Archaeology. He completed his Bachelor degree in 2010 and his Masters degree in 2012. Right after receiving his Masters degree he enrolled in the post-graduate studies in English language and literature as a single major. He is currently writing his thesis in the field of English Modernism. Denis KUZMANOVIĆ was born in Mostar in 1985. After completing his elementary and high school education there, he enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Mostar in 2005 as a double major in English language and literature and Philosophy. He completed his Bachelor degree in 2008 and his Master degree in 2010. He has been employed as an assistant in the English language and literature department at the Faculty of Philosophy in Mostar since 2011 and has enrolled in the post-graduate studies in English language and literature as a single major. He is currently researching and writing his doctorate thesis. Branko MARIJANOVIĆ studied English and German at the University of Zadar in Croatia and he finished his postgraduate studies at the University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation investigating the role of Milton’s Paradise Lost in the development of the novel as a literary genre. He works as a secondary school teacher and as a lecturer at the University of Mostar. He is interested in literature, philosophy and movies, particularly in the interrelations between civilization and evolution and in their influence on modern day people. He has published a few articles and given a few lectures exploring the mentioned topics. Aleksandra NIKČEVIĆ-BATRIĆEVIĆ teaches courses on American literature, American women poetry and feminist literary theory and criticism at the University of Montenegro (Faculty of Philology, Department of English Language and Literature). Her publications include papers on Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, second wave feminism and other American authors. She has initiated numerous projects in translation (literary texts and literary theory). She is a member of the editorial board of journals for language, literary and cultural studies.


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Olivera POPOVIĆ is a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Philology, University of Montenegro. She teaches Italian literature and her publications focus on theory and critics of travel writing. She collaborates in an international project concerning interadriatic relationships—CISVA (Centro Interuniversitario Internazionale di Studi sul Viaggio Adriatico). Robert SULLIVAN was born in Ireland and educated at universities in England (Leeds and Oxford), before taking his Ph.D. at Brown University in the United States. He has taught in Algeria, Ghana, the United States, and several universities in Europe. He is the author of two academic books and numerous essays on literary criticism. Sullivan has been the recipient of two Fulbright Scholar grants and three Fulbright Senior Specialist grants. Currently he is a Visiting Fulbright Specialist at the University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bavjola SHATRO is senior lecturer of Contemporary Albanian Literature and World Literature of the Twentieth Century in Aleksandër Moisiu University, Albania. She is author and co-author of 5 books in the field of literary studies and has contributed with chapters in three volumes of selected essays published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She is co-editor of a forthcoming volume of selected essays on English Language and Literature that will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She has published numerous articles and reviews in different peer-reviewed journals in the U.S. and Europe and has presented papers at dozens of international conferences around the world. She has a wide academic experience as a researcher and lecturer in the U.S. and Europe, too. Besides, she is Vice-President of South-East European Studies Association (SEESA) USA Vanja VUKIĆEVIĆ GARIĆ works at the University of Montenegro. She teaches Literary Translation and various courses in English literature at the Faculty of Philology and the English Language at the Faculty of Philosophy. She has published many articles on the work of James Joyce, modernism and postmodernism, contemporary British novel, whereas her other academic interests also include the 19th English literature, gender theories, Native American literature, as well as theory and philosophy of translation.


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Aleksandra ŽEŽELJ KOCIĆ holds a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Her primary interest is Anglo-American Modernism. She has been teaching the English Language and Literature at Philological High School in Belgrade since 2004. She has published a number of papers on diverse literary issues.

INDEX

A Ackroyd, Peter, 224, 226, 227,

230 Aldridge, John W., 164 Arendt, Hannah, 188, 192, 193,

195 Aristotle, 106, 110, 111, 223 Arnold, Mathew, 36, 66, 67, 83 Ascham, Sir Roger, 296 Auden, Wystan Hugh, 99 Augustine, St., 44, 246, 247, 254 B Bachelard, Gaston, 224, 228 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 146-148, 223 Balzac, Honoré de, 282, 300 Barnes, Julian, 107 Barth, Roland, 142 Bassi, Shaul, 301 Bataille, Georges, 151, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159 Baumeister, Roy F., 210, 211,

213, 214 Beegel, Suzan, 170 Bell, Milicent, 180 Benjamin, Walter, 207 Benson, Jackson J., 163 Berendt, John, 299, 301 Bhabha, Homi, 303 Bloom, Harold, 145, 146, 239 Bon, Gustave Le, 219 Bossuet, Jacques-Benigne, 239,

245, 246 Boym, Svetlana, 290 Brathwaite, Edward, 261, 170 Brecht, Bertolt, 107, 164, 165,

257, 259, 260 Brezhnev, Leonid, 193 Brooke, Rupert, 70, 72

Browning, Robert, 91, 110, 296, 301

Burgess, Anthony, 146 Butler, Judith, 164-166 Byron, George Gordon, 41, 46,

87, 170, 286, 296, 298-300 C Calvino, Italo, 299 Camus, Albert, 251-253 Cawelti, John G., 16, 18, 21 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 258 Church, Benjamin, 17 Cicero, 254 Cirino, Mark, 167 Clark, William, 11 Cleckley, Hervey, 116 Cody, Buffalo Bill, 19, 23 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 48,

57, 107-110 Columbus, Christopher, 9 Cooper, James Fennimore, 18,

19 Crashaw, Richard, 43 Crevecoeur, John de, 12, 14 Curtis, Ariana, 301 Curtis, Daniel, 301 D Daiches, David, 90 Dante, Alighieri, 41, 43, 45-47,

53-55, 57, 58, 63, 94, 191, 241, 242, 245, 246, 253, 295

Debray, Régis, 295 Dickens, Charles, 300 Drury, Shadia B., 238, 243 Dryden, John, 87, 258

Index

316

E Eliot, Thomas Sterns, 87-103,

110, 142, 258 Elisabeth I, 239 Ellmann, Richard, 141 Esslin, Martin, 260 Eusebius, 240, 241 F Fantina, Richard, 170 Fei, Alberto Toso, 301 Fetterley, Judith, 164, 180 Filmer, Robert, 239 Filson, John, 17, 18 Flaubert, Gustave, 107, 142 Foucault, Michel, 281 Fradinger, Moira, 265 Fremont, John C., 12, 13 Freud, Sigmund, 116, 224, 251 Fromm, Erich, 124 Frost, Robert, 69, 99, 110-112 Frye, Northrop, 241 Fugard, Athol, 266, 267, 270 G Gibbs, James, 261 Gilbert, Helen, 260 Gilbert, Sandra, 170 Gilpin, William, 13 Goddard, Harold C., 238, 243,

254 Goethe, Wolfgang, 41, 223, 296,

300 Goff, Barbara, 270 Goldoni, Carlo, 294 Goldsworthy, Vesna, 286 Goya, Francisco, 170 Gramsci, Antonio, 281 Grenfell, Julian, 66, 73-75 Grey, Zane Gubar, Suzan, 179

H Hamilton, Alexander, 27 Hardy, Thomas, 66-71, 83, 155 Hazlitt, William, 248 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 87, 251-

253 Heidegger, Martin, 224-226,

228, 229, 231, 234 Hemingway, Ernest, 82, 163,

164, 166-180, 182, 300 Herbert, George, 128 Hobbes, Thomas, 27, 220 Holland, Patrick, 289 Homer, 47, 53, 58, 147, 258 Horace, 80, 81 Huggan, Graham, 289 Hughes, Ted, 258 Huxley, Aldous, 193 J Jackson, Andrew, 12 James I, 240 James, Henry, 66, 295-299, 301 Jefferson, Thomas, 11-13, 15,

18, 22, 26, 27 Jezernik, Bozidar, 286 Johnson, Samuel, 110 Jong, Erica, 303 Joyce, James, 89, 95-97, 141-

148 Joyce, Stanislaus, 141, 142 Jung, Carl, 89 K Kadare, Ismail, 187-207 Kafka, Franz, 206 Kani, John, 266, 267 Kant, Immanuel, 107, 223 Krleža, Miroslav, 101 L L’Amour, Louis, 21


317

Larkin, Philip, 83 Wolf, Larry, 281-283 Lawrence, David Herbert, 151-

160, 179, 296 Lee, Harper, 250 Leed, Eric, 287 Lewis, Meriwether, 11 Lewis, Sinclair, 115-117 Limerick, Patricia, 24, 27 Lisle, Debbie, 289 Locke, John, 107 London, Jack, 93 Longfellow, Henry

Wadsworth, 296 Louis XIV, 238, 239 M Machiavelli, Niccolo, 243, 244 Mandeville, Sir John, 296 Mann, Thomas, 302, 304-307 Marlowe, Christopher, 258 Marx, Karl, 202, 224, 251 Maurier, Daphne du, 229 May, Alan Le, 21 McEwan, Ian, 199 Melville, Herman, 296 Merwin, William Stanely, 105,

113 Michaels, Walter Benn, 32, 33,

35, 37 Millett, Kate, 152 Millon, Theodore , 124 Mills, Sarah, 287, 288 Milton, John, 43-50, 53-56, 58,

59, 63, 239, 251 Modigliani, Amedeo

Clemente, 300 Monet, Claude, 301 Morisseau-Leroy, Felix, 263,

265 N Nabokov, Vladimir, 146 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 112

Ntshona, Winston, 266, 267 O Orwell, George, 93, 187-189,

93, 94, 97, 99, 200, 201, 203-207

Osofisan, Femi, 269, 270 Owen, Wilfred, 66, 76, 80, 82,

83, 179 P Paxton, Frederic Logan, 24 Peck, H. Daniel, 31, 33-39 Philip II, 239 Pirandello, Luigi, 257, 259, 266 Piscator, Erwin, 258 Plato, 56, 223, 246, 248, 253 Polo, Marco, 295, 300 Pope, Alexander, 87, 111 Pope, Jessie, 66, 76-78, 80, 83 Pound, Ezra, 71, 74, 88-90, 99,

258, 296, 300 Pratt, Mary Louise, 281 Proust, Marcel, 296, 300 R Radcliffe, Ann, 46 Reich, Wilhelm, 124 Reisner, Marc, 11, 14, 15 Remington, Frederic, 20 Reynolds, Michael, 172 Reynolds, Nedra, 225 Rhys, Jean, 107 Roosevelt, Theodore, 22, 23 Rosenberg, Isaac, 66, 70, 73, 74,

76, 83 Ross, Michael, 302 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 27,

282, 300 Rowlandson, Mary, 16, 17 Rubinstein, Arthur, 300 Ruskin, John, 296

Index

318

S Said, Edward, 141, 143-145,

280, 281, 283 Sand, George, 295 Sassoon, Siegfried, 66, 76, 79,

83 Schaefer, Jack, 21 Schiller, Friedrich, 45 Schwenger, Peter, 169 Scott, Walter, 18 Seaman, Owen, 66, 78, 79, 83 Sesiu, Sabata, 270, 271 Shakespeare, Willam, 93, 99,

111, 137, 147, 237-242, 248, 250, 252, 253, 255, 258, 296, 301, 302

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 41, 42, 44, 46-58, 63, 107-109, 296

Shelley, Mary, 41, 55, 63 Shklovsky, Viktor, 105, 106,

111 Showalter, Elaine, 172 Simić, Charles, 169 Slotkin, Richard, 10, 15-18, 21,

26 Smith, Henry Nash, 13, 14, 17,

23 Sophocles, 67, 260, 261, 263,

270, 275 Stael, Madame de, 300 Staub, Ervin, 209, 217-219 Stevens, Wallace, 105 Stoppard, Tom, 106 Stravinsky, Igor, 300 Strychacz, Thomas, 164, 166,

176 Swinburne, Richard, 253 T Tennyson, Alfred, 89, 110, 258 Thoreau, Henry David, 31-40 Tiffin, Helen, 260 Tocqueville, Alex de, 12, 13 Todorova, Maria, 283-286

Tolstoy, Leo, 106 Tompkins, Joanne, 260 Turner, Frederic Jackson, 9. 19-

28 Tyler, Lisa, 170 V Vasquez Coronado, Don

Francisco, 10 Vergil, 41 Vernon, Alex, 167, 176, 177,

180 Voltaire, François-Marie

Arouet, 282

W Waller, James, 212 Walpole, Robert, 296 Waugh, Evelyn, 301 Webb, Walter Prescott, 24 Weisstein, Ulrich, 304 Wertheim, Albert, 268 Weyenberg, Astrid Van, 269,

270 Wharton, Edith, 301 Whitman, Walt, 84, 87 Wilber, Charles Dana, 12 Wister, Owen, 19, 20 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 113 Wordsworth, William, 39, 54,

87, 107, 108, 296 Wren, Christopher, 227, 228,

231 Y Yeats, William Butler, 96, 216 Young, Philip, 164 Z Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 193 Zorzi, Rossella Mamoli, 299

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