Postmodern synthesis of shakespearean tragic plots in the plays of Koki Mitani (Japan) and Anne-Marie MacDonald (Canada)

Abstract

A.-M. MacDonald's "Goodnight Desdemona ("Good Morning Juliet")" and K. Mitani's "University of Laughs" are postmodern receptions of Shakespeare's tragic plots. Shakespearean intertext is manifested in the plays at the level of the title complex, plot line, character system, and genre features of the texts. The intertextual dialogue of cultures contributes to the affirmation of ideas relevant in modern society (feminism, freedom of speech and creative self-realization). The genrological features of postmodern comedies of the "Shakespearean text" are an ironic attitude to the source material, at times close to parody; filling with new content and paradoxical interpretation of certain plot moves of the classical text; invariability of character types in the face of changes in external circumstances, as well as social and political conditions, internal psychological motivations; the possibility of reception of a new Shakespearean work on two levels – in connection with the classical pra-text and in the context of the classical text. Postmodern dramas based on Shakespearean plots are thoroughly psychological: they raise problems of the psychology of creativity, artistic ideas become projections of the author's psychological problems and social conflicts of the present. In MacDonald's play, the main character Constance's journey into the inner world of the work simultaneously becomes a self-analysis of her psychological problems, a cathartic allegory of a young woman's subconscious anxieties, doubts and desires. The reader/viewer of Mitani's play is centered on the psychology of creation: the relationship between the author and the censor, the psychology of personality and the psychology of relationships. As a result of the interaction between the author and the censor, not only the text of the comedy is improved, and the inner world of the characters also changes.