Gender aspects of dramatic configurations in August Strindberg’s "The Father" and Davit Kliashvili’s "Darispan’s Misfortune"

Abstract

The master’s thesis is an attempt to study dramatic configurations in the plays of XIX- XX century, written in different cultural contexts. The goal of the thesis is to examine gender aspects of configurations and to analyze their influence on overall structure of the plays. The plays selected for the study are August Strindberg’s The Father and Davit Kliashvili’s Darispan’s Misfortune. The configurations were examined within the methodological frames proposed by Manfred Pfister. The notion of configuration was established in scientific circuit in the second half of 1970s, though it had it predecessors as early as 1920s. The thesis summarizes the theories developed by drama theoreticians like Pfister, Brandell, Edgar; as well as the works by theatre semioticians; a separate chapter reviews the scientific sources dedicated to Darispan’s Misfortune and The Father.

The close examination of the texts revealed that both plays depict overtly patriarchal gender hierarchy models. In The Father by Strindberg configurations bear genderconfrontational character and are of key importance as plot-developing devices; while Kldiashvili’s Darispan’s Misfortune presents a set of passive gender confrontation in configurations. Accordingly, in Strindberg’s play the hierarchy is destroyed, while in Kldiashvili’s play it remains intact.

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