The Cognitive Relativism in Luigi Pirandello''s Right You Are (If You Think You Are), Six Characters in Search of an Author, and Henry IV: A Foucaultian View

• Main Authors: Hsi-chiang LIN, 林熙強
• Other Authors: I-lu TENG
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60565945099224928504

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 92 === 　　Luigi Pirandello has created numerous literary works and the concept of Cognitive Relativism is one of the cruxes of his dramatic works. The attempt of this thesis is to penetrate the quintessence of Pirandellian theme─the contradiction of and the demarcation between these pairs of relativistic elements, namely, truth and falsity, reality and illusion, sanity and insanity─by investigating Foucaultian discourses on the mechanism of power. There are five chapters. 　　Chapter One is the introduction to the plays and cultural background. Both Pirandello and Foucault experienced postwar chaos reigning over the Western world. Under the foregoing historical context, three subjects will first be introduced: the affinity between Pirandellian theatre and Surrealist art, major breakthroughs of contemporary Cognitive Relativism, and the influence of Foucault''s power/knowledge inquiry on self-identification. 　　Chapter Two deals with Right You Are (If You Think You Are). What Pirandello expounds through the play is in fact the keynote of Cognitive Relativism: the denial of the possibility of objective truths and the futility of approaching the absolute truth. According to Foucault''s "Truth and Power," each society creates a "regime of truth" in conformity with its beliefs, values, and mores. In this chapter, the "regime of truth" within the micro-society which the dramatis personae exist will be examined. 　　Chapter Three deals with Six Characters in Search of an Author. The play is the most prominent dramatic work of Pirandello. By recurrent controversies between characters and actors about reality and illusion, Pirandello blurs the boundary between real world (life) and fictive world (stage). Furthermore, the ambiguous identities of the characters and the actors arouse the audience''s critical re-examination into the intrinsic quality of theatre. In this chapter, via analyzing the "author function," which Foucault discourses in "What Is an Author?," delicate relations between the absent author and his characters will be illustrated. 　　Chapter Four deals with Henry IV. The play is an aggregation of Pirandellian theatrical devices: by means of the historical play and the play-within-the-play, the elaborate structure of Henry IV is compounded in equal parts of historical events and fictitious plots. By these preceding features, Pirandello advances a philosophical notion about the definition of sanity and insanity. In this chapter, through Foucaultian archaeological analyses within Madness and Civilization, multiple appearances of Pirandellian sanity and insanity will be explicated. 　　Chapter Five is the Conclusion. As a consequence of the aforementioned research, it is obvious that Foucaultian viewpoint of power structures offer an illuminating explanation to the relativistic questions of Pirandellian plays. That is, the predicaments which Pirandellian protagonists confront with are constructed under all kinds of institutionalized human power─culture, history, moral disciplines, and so forth.