The Evolution of Modern English Drama

Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 5

Theoretical Groundworks
1 Modern Drama as a Project of Enlightenment 18
2 A Theoretical Excursion into the Postmodern Sublime 45

Book I
I Modern Drama of Enlightenment 86
1 The Plot Structure of Bernard Shaw's Didactic Drama 86
2 he Dramatization of Habitus: A Bourdieun Reading of Pygmalion 106
3 Eugene O'Neill's Dramatization of Nietzsche's Idea of
the Anti-Bourgeois Spirit 124
4 Political Unconscious Staged in J M Synge's
The Playboy of the Western World 152
5 "Circe": A Modernist's Gesture to Stage the Sublime
in the Human Psyche 176

Book II
II Postmodern Drama of the Sublime 202
1 The Postmodern Drama as mise-en-sc?ne of the Sublime 202
2 The Postmodern Politico-technological Sublime Staged
in David Pledger's K 217
3 The Textual Sublime: Samuel Beckett's Endgame as
A Postmodern Allegory on the Relationship between Man and Nature 235
4 The Political Sublime Staged in Harold Pinter's Late Plays 257
5-1 The Sublime Universe of Simulation in Beckett's Stage:
Reflexivity as the Exchange of Signs within the Text 273
5-2 Theatereality as a Way of Simulating Virtual Reality on Stage 286

III Conclusion 319

Select Bibliography 324
Index 354