Comic Games of Parody and Grotesque Realism in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:a Bakhtian Perspective
Ajoy Batta1, Anum Mirza2
1Ajoy Batta, Associate Professor and Head, Department of English, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara (Punjab), India.
2Anum Mirza, Ph.D. Scholar, Lovely Professional University, Spiritual Despair and Material Cupidity Edward Albee’s Play Depicts George and Martha Scrapping.
Manuscript received on 04 May 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 16 May 2019 | Manuscript Published on 23 May 2019 | PP: 441-443 | Volume-7 Issue-6S5 April 2019 | Retrieval Number: F10740476S519/2019©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: The intensive review of literature of past and present clearly establishes the fact that no study is available on Edward Albee from the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin. Albee is an American playwright belonging to the tradition of The Theatre of the Absurd. Bakhtin propounded the concept of “carnival” and treated it as the revolutionary current of modernity. His study of literature from Rabelais to Dostoevsky gave an insight into the comic tools employed by Dostoevsky. Bakhtin is the first Russian critic who has shown that in the course of cultural history transformation of fashion, tastes and dramatic techniques help to dramatize the social reality. Bakhtin propounded the concepts of dialogism and “hetroglossia” to give an epical dimension to drama and novel. In this paper rave culture of Bakhtin is excavated focusing on the textual analysis of the plays of Albee. Rave serves as a temporary liberation from the seriousness and anxieties of life and all seriousness is brought down to earth by Edward Albee in his plays. For Baktin, literature is not merely an ideational phenomena but it is an epistemological instrument concerning intellectual, imaginative and emotional attitudes. Edward Albee examined the themes of breakdown of marriage, love and sex in his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) using grotesque realism and the farcical elements of the comedy. Martha, George, Nick and Honey are the major characters that are living with a void but Albee make them to play fun and games to laugh away the painful memories of the past [1][2].
Keywords: Grotesque Realism, Perspective, Carnival, Alienation, Epistemological, Farcical, Rave Culture, Ideational Phenomena.
Scope of the Article: Software Engineering Techniques and Production Perspectives