Pragmatic action, imaginative action, annihilating action: the quest for self-realization in three major dramatic phases of the West (Elizabethan Renaissance, European nineteenth century, and the theatre of the absurd)

Author

Bahee Hadaegh, University of Wollongong

Year

2009

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Faculty of Arts

Recommended Citation

Hadaegh, Bahee, Pragmatic action, imaginative action, annihilating action: the quest for self-realization in three major dramatic phases of the West (Elizabethan Renaissance, European nineteenth century, and the theatre of the absurd), Doctor of Philosophy thesis, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, 2009. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3147

Abstract

This thesis argues that the quest for self-fulfillment is the recurrent motif of the three major dramatic eras of Western tragedy. This theme is a continuous but transforming tradition in which tragic heroes endeavor to approximate a more complete degree of self-realization respectively through outward action, inner imagination and an inaction that is also a reflective struggle to find meaning. Discussions of tragic theatre in the West have generally concentrated on a degenerative process of Western tragedy in terms of progressively atrophied dramatic action and gradual manifestation of passivity, nostalgia and nihilism. This thesis aims to show that, although the major course of transformation is from action to inaction, under the light of the continuous motif of the quest and the degree of success by which the characters approximate the wished-for selffulfillment, Western tragedy is a regression in order to progress.

To demonstrate a connection across Western theatrical history, I look in turn at the three major dramatic eras of the Renaissance, the nineteenth century, and twentieth-century existentialist/ absurdist stages. The regressive progress of Western tragedy from the Renaissance active quest to the imaginative quest of the nineteenth-century dramatic characters is demonstrated through Nietzsche’s understanding of Dionysian phenomenal-self forgetfulness, inwardness, suffering and rebirth. Such a progressive course is also evident when the seemingly negative inaction of the Absurd dramatic characters is viewed through the author’s own cultural background, considering the very basic mystic concepts of self-annihilation and self-realization.