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theses

The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze the published rewritings of Greek tragedies during Chilean post dictatorship (1990-2010). The study of these texts allows the exploration of different discourses of disconformity dissatisfaction and discomfort. Greek tragedies are focused in noble families, representing at the same time the elite that governs the nation and reflecting the social conflicts of the country in the tensions inside their home. Rewriting the tragedies is an exercise that points out that this kind of conflicts have been in our culture for a long time, but at the same time it makes an specific criticism to the socio political context where is inserted. The analysis is articulated upon three interwined teorethical axes. The first one is the intertextual relation of the plays with the classics and its and the reception process determined by the knowledge and the expectations of the readers and the audience. As Marvin Carlson points out, theater is specially linked to cultural memory hence present and past are always in stage. One a second axis, the concepts of catharsis, betrayal, guilt and responsibility, according to Jaques Lacan’s theory, are also essential in this dissertation. Catharsis allows the purification of desire and is possible only when the hero recognizes that in order to fulfill his or her desire the boundaries from fear and compassion must be crossed. Lacan proposes that giving up the desire always relates to betrayal and guilt arises when the character admits a betrayal to his desire. Therefore acting in the name of good does not protect anyone from guilt (379-81). The difference between ethic responsibility and guilt resides in their relation with desire, one can be ethically responsible for an atrocity (like killing your own children) but never feel guilty because that act was made in the pursuit of desire. The third axis of this dissertation discusses the notions of postmodernity and post dictatorship, and the links between them. As Frederic Jameson and Linda Hutcheon note, postmodernity is a phenomenon that cannot escape implication in the economic (late capitalism) and ideological (liberal humanism) dominants of its time (A Poetics xiii). Postmodernity is deeply linked to the post dictatorship decades in Chile when it was evident that there was no outside form the neoliberal system established by the government of Augusto Pinochet. Each chapter analyses a number of Chilean plays related to a corresponding Greek tragedy. The rewritings of Oediphus the King explore the tensions between knowledge, guilt, destiny and power. The texts that have an intertextual relation with Medea stage the consequences and possibilities of revenge and the shifting positions of victim and victimizer. The plays that make references to any of the parts of Oresteia present a reflection about the tensions between generations and the inheritance of betrayal and guilt, questioning if the younger must or must not fulfill their parents’ revenge. Finally, the only version of Antigona included in this study, represents the omnipotence of neo-capitalism, and indicates how the laws of the market have replaced the laws of the state degrading family ties to commercial relationships.

ETD_4301

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001600001.ETD.000066939

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

Includes vita

by Viviana María Pinochet Cobos

doi:10.7282/T3862F6G

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

934912

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