The Babellian Allegory of Language: A Study of Pirandello's Theater Trilogy

• Main Authors: Li Shwu-Chuang, 李淑娟
• Other Authors: Tung Chung-Hsuan
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 1994
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51937082556583416618

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 外國語文學系 === 82 === Realistic conventions have been playing an important role in play-writing up to the Second World War. Theater seems the mechanism by which the playwright relfects reality. For Luigi Pirandello, reality is like an ever-changing living form; language just creates illusions rather than reality for the empty abstraction of the words. Pirandello's theater trilogy best accounts for his obsession with language. Hence, this thesis is to investigate, from Derridean perspective,the disintegration of the self in the act of creation in Luigi Pirandello's theater trilogy. In Chapter One, I introduce Pirandello's life,his theatric aesthetics, and deconstruction related to Pirandello's main ideas. Chapter Two is a study of <Six Characters in Search of an Author>.I examine the reversibility of the "violent hierarchy" in the theater and the hybrid nature of the text. In this play the self is distrupted in the differance of language. Chapter Three centers on <Each in His Own Way> . By inves- tigating "the dangerous supplement" of speech, I want to show the futility of searching for the absolute. I observe that in the uncertainty of words the individual has become the location of a sign where many selves come and go. Chapter Four is an analysis of <Tonight We Improvise>. Now language is used not for communication but for power struggle. The players are torn between the absolute authority of the author and the freedom of creation. This thesis concludes that Pirandello's theater trilogy presents the chaos of language; it is a Babellian allegory of language in which the concept of the self is deconstructed.