DISCOVERING THE MIND IN DRAMA

Transcription

1 DISCOVERING THE MIND IN DRAMA NARRATOLOGY AND THE REPRESENTATION OF CHARACTERS MIND IN GRIEF IN SIMON STEPHENS SEA WALL AND ONE MINUTE Charlotte Durnajkin Stamnummer: Promotor: Prof. dr. Marco Caracciolo Copromotor: Prof. dr. Christel Stalpaert Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad Master in de richting taal- en letterkunde: Engels Academiejaar:

2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would very much like to thank my supervisor Prof. dr. Marco Caracciolo for helping me with my master thesis. I am very grateful to him for having taken on my project and for believing in its possibilities. Without his support I would not have had the opportunity to work on the subject that I feel passionate about. He has encouraged me throughout the process and I am very thankful to him for his advice, feedback and guidance. I would also like to thank my thesis co-supervisor Prof. dr. Christel Stalpaert for her assistance and confidence in this interdisciplinary project. She helped me orientate myself in the field of Theatre Studies. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to Mr Simon Stephens for his contribution to the paper. I had the immense pleasure of interviewing him for this project and my interview with him has proved to be an extremely helpful source in the analysis. Lastly, I would also like to thank all my loved ones. They know how important this project has been for me and I thank them for their encouragement, enthusiasm and love. I am especially grateful to my mother for supporting me throughout the process. She has made me realise that you should not back away from achieving your dreams.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1 2. METHODOLOGY SITUATING THE PAPER: READING DRAMA NARRATOLOGY SOME STRUCTURALIST AND POST-CLASSICAL APPROACHES Structuralist Narratology and Narrative Levels Post-classical Narratology Narratology of Drama Introduction to the Transgeneric Theory Theories Validating the Narrativity of Drama Representing Fictional Minds: A Classical Approach and Postclassical Approaches Introduction Studying Characters Mind ANALYSING STEPHENS PLAYS ANALYSIS DRAMATIC NARRATIVE LEVELS: NARRATIVE LEVELS IN SEA WALL AND ONE MINUTE MIND REPRESENTATION IN SEA WALL The Extradiegetic Level of Stage Directions The Intradiegetic Homodiegetic Level of the Monologue Mind Representation: Levels of Directness An Indirect Source Within the Direct Source: Gaps and Metaphors in the Monologue 44

4 A First Conclusion: Mind Representation in Sea Wall MIND REPRESENTATION IN ONE MINUTE An Indirect Source: The Extradiegetic Level of Stage Directions Indirect Mind Representation Direct Sources: The Monologue and the Dialogue The Intradiegetic Homodiegetic Level of the Monologue Dialogue: What Characters Say to Each Other and the Expression of Thoughts Indirect Sources Within the Direct Source: Gaps and a Metaphor A Second Conclusion: Mind Representation in One Minute GRIEF IN SEA WALL AND ONE MINUTE: HOW IT IS SINGLED OUT IN THE MONOLOGUE AND SHARED IN THE DIALOGUE CONCLUSION WORKS CITED 85 (27,307 words)

5 The question of how dramatists articulate or release ideas informs much contemporary critical debate around new writing. There is a generation of critics and writers and directors who retain a loyalty to the form of play that addresses idea through utterance or statement. Such statement is normally delivered in lengthy, often beautiful, speeches about four-fifths of the way through a play. Normally by the play s central protagonist. I find this limiting. In the plays in this collection I ve tried as much as possible to use dramatic structure or form, linguistic register or visual images, or more often the contradictory juxtaposition of these elements, to dramatise that which I want to say. I find that such juxtaposition creates plays that demand a position of interpretation from their audience rather than reception. As an audience member I always enjoy creatively investigating an idea rather than simply listening to one. Simon Stephens, Introduction

6 1 1. INTRODUCTION This master dissertation presents the opportunity to look more closely into a subject that up to now has scarcely been paid attention to in the field of English literature. It will focus on the topic of contemporary English theatre texts and seeks to introduce it into the field of literary analysis. There can be no doubt about the fact that England can be lauded for its plays by influential playwrights in the past. However, the relevance of living playwrights in England s vibrant theatre culture today is equally undeniable. The paper will not try to establish a comprehensive view of contemporary English theatre, but it will try to introduce it into the literary discussion by focusing on one contemporary English playwright. One of the contemporary English writers whose work deserves attention from an academic perspective is Simon Stephens. This successful playwright has produced a large body of work, starting his career at the Royal Court Theatre, where his play Bluebird (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1998, directed by Gordon Anderson) 1 was produced. From then on, he has received much critical attention for plays like Port (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2002), On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange Theatre and National Theatre, London, 2005), Motortown (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2006), Pornography (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hanover, 2007; Edinburgh Festival/Birmingham Rep, 2008 and Tricycle Theatre, London, 2009), Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008), Sea Wall (Bush Theatre, 2008/Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2009) and Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, London, and Royal Exchange Theatre, 2009). His adaptation for the stage of Mark Haddon s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (National Theatre, 2012) has not only been a box-office hit (the West End performance of the play had extensions for five years), but also won seven 2013 Olivier Awards and five 2015 Tony Awards (National Theatre, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). Stephens can clearly be called a 1 Information on the productions of these plays was found on the website of Bloomsbury Publishing.

7 2 successful and prolific writer, who has received much critical acclaim. To say that he is in demand would be putting it mildly, theatre critic Kate Kellaway wrote in Apart from occupying a prominent position in English theatre because of his writing, Stephens has also obtained a reputation as mentor of young writers, actors and directors (Stephens, Simon Stephens: A Working Diary). He started his theatrical career in the literary department of the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers Programme (Bloomsbury Publishing) and he has participated in several writing workshops. 2 Stephens has become an important voice as mediator between playwrights and the public. This can be demonstrated further by the fact that in 2016, Stephens was asked to write a working diary, said to give unprecedented access to the mind of one of the most important playwrights of the twentyfirst century (Stephens, Simon Stephens: A Working Diary). At the end of 2016, additionally, the author hosted a podcast series, the Royal Court Playwright s Podcast, interviewing some of the world s leading playwrights (Royal Court Theatre). The fact that Stephens was given this function as interviewer, shows that he is a key figure in English theatre today. If one embarks on exploring contemporary English theatre texts, the work of this ubiquitous playwright serves as a representative starting point. The voice to which the English theatre scene chooses to listen, is chosen in this dissertation as the subject of analysis. There are some specific themes that recur throughout Stephens work. In an interview, the playwright himself indicates this, when he explains: I do think there s a thematic connection, actually. I was asked this question [...] by a director from Holland who didn t know my plays. He asked me a question which people never really ask, which is, he asked me what do I write about. [...] So I told him that I write about death, love, alcohol and children, and I think that s true. Actually, in all of the plays from Bluebird 2 Stephens has amongst others done a masterclass at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (London), the Dramatyczny Theatre (Warsaw) and the Royal Exchange Theatre (Manchester).

8 3 to Wastwater, all kind of sixteen of those plays, there s death, love, alcohol and children. Sometimes combined. Quite often children die. Quite often lovers die. [...]. The plays you can almost see as one where death is very present, one where love is very present, one where alcohol is very present or one where children are very present, or the combinations of those two things. But they re there in all of them. (The Royal Court Theatre, Wastwater In Conversation with Simon Stephens ) In his answer, Stephens points out the crucial fact that there seems to be a thematic connection at the heart of his work. This also becomes obvious in what Stephens admits to be his most favourite play, namely Sea Wall (The Royal Court Theatre, Wastwater In Conversation with Simon Stephens ). This play features a single character, who is grieving over the loss of his child. It is a tragic monologue, a Father s Tale (Kellaway) in which the components of Stephens two key themes death and children stand out. In Sea Wall, the audience gets to know Alex, a father who tells a story about his family (he has a wife and a daughter), about their trips to the south of France where his father-in-law lives and about the event of his daughter dying. The notion of grief sits at the heart of the play. The monologue is drenched in grief, as Lyn Gardner writes in The Guardian, and this has affected many people. Sea Wall has had much public response and people have been really moved, as Stephens indicates in an interview (Veracity Digital, Sea Wall). People who have seen the play (or the short film based on it) have apparently found it really devastating to watch a man lose everything (Gardner). This response raises questions about the way an audience might understand Alex mourning. As the character is talking about his life and particular events in it, an audience infers his sadness, desperation and hopelessness. Alex never explicitly states that he is going through a process of grief, yet every person reading or watching the play will understand that he is. This paper sets out to look at the stratagems that generate inferences about characters mental life in plays and will try to distinguish the

9 4 different narratological levels in plays that have an influence on the representation of characters mind. Given that Sea Wall has the particular quality of being a monologue, the dissertation will study an additional play by Stephens in which dialogue forms an important part alongside several monologues, namely One Minute (2003). One Minute is about the police investigation into a missing child [...] and the play looks at a constellation of characters that surrounds her disappearance (Stephens, Simon Stephens on One Minute ). This play revolves around the same themes as Sea Wall, death and children, and, moreover, it also carries the notion of grief at the heart of it. Stephens explains: The play is more of a mediation on grief than it is a cop story (Stephens, Introduction, xii). Because these two plays feature parents that are suffering from grief, both plays use certain narratological strategies for representing the parents mind in grief. This dissertation raises questions about those specific strategies used by Stephens to convey the mental life of the characters in grief. The paper argues that in Stephens plays Sea Wall and One Minute, the stage directions are extradiegetic narrative instances, functioning as indirect representations of the characters mind in grief, and that the dialogues and monologues function as direct representations of the characters mind in grief. Furthermore, it shows how the monologues are intradiegetic homodiegetic narrative instances, reflecting the characters processing a loss. To investigate the theme of grief and its manifestation through the characters in Sea Wall and One Minute, this paper will make use of the framework of narratology. By adopting the structuralist narratological concepts of narrative levels and the poststructuralist theories of the representation of fictional minds, the paper seeks to construct a workable theoretical toolbox for studying mind representation in Stephens plays. In order for this narratological framework to be a practical tool for drama analysis, the narratology of drama will also be introduced. This will give insight into how drama can be given a position in the narratological debate and how this paper therefore can apply narratological theories to the

10 5 analysis of plays. First, the paper will introduce the particular theories on which it will rely and will explain how these theories will be used in the analysis to study mind representation in Stephens two plays. Thereafter, the plays Sea Wall and One Minute will be analysed with regard to their use of particular dramatic devices in the representation of mind. The paper will distinguish the different narrative levels in the plays and focus on each level s strategies for the representation of characters mind in grief.

11 6 2. METHODOLOGY The paper will draw upon a number of theoretical sources as a background for the analysis of Stephens plays Sea Wall and One Minute. This chapter introduces the most important works on which the research will be based. First, the paper will be positioned within the field of drama analysis. Secondly, the field of narratology will be introduced. Thereafter, the narratology of drama and the narratological theory of the representation of fictional minds will be discussed. Finally, the way in which the paper intends to approach and undertake the analysis will be clarified SITUATING THE PAPER: READING DRAMA In his article, Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of Drama, Manfred Jahn investigates the extent to which drama admits of the narratological concepts of a narrating instance or a narrative voice (660), but first gives an overview of the different existing approaches to drama and positions himself within them. Identifying one s critical approach is necessary in order not to get lost in the multifacetedness of modern reality, Jahn states (659). It allows one to take a stand and meaningfully contribute to the issues, politics, and agendas of one s discipline, when studying a subject (Jahn 660). The same is required for this paper. The study in the paper needs to be clearly situated within the spectrum of drama-analysis, in order for it to be clear as to what aspects of drama will be taken into account. Jahn distinguishes three reception-oriented theories of drama: Poetic Drama, Theater Studies and Reading Drama. These three schools each have their specific focus of attention. While Poetic Drama prioritizes the dramatic text, Theater Studies privileges the performance over the text (Jahn 661). This paper needs to be situated in the third approach to drama, as its preoccupations accord with this particular theory. Reading Drama considers

12 7 both the text and the performance as meaningful constituents of a play, often using a performance-oriented textual analysis as an interpretive strategy (Jahn 662). This, for example, is made clear by the fact that this school pays particular attention to the secondary text of the stage directions (Jahn 662), which is an element this paper will also focus on. Additionally, Jahn explains how bringing narratology to bear on the theory and analysis of plays is explicitly supported by the school of Reading Drama (Jahn 662) and this is one of the overarching methods that the paper will use. It will use the narrative theory of consciousness representation, typically used to analyse prose narratives, as a basis for the study of plays. In doing this, the paper will to a certain extent promote a cross-disciplinary exchange between critics, theorists, and theater practioners, like the school of Reading Drama does (Jahn 662). The dissertation will thus apply theories typically used for prose to plays and reconsider them in light of drama-specific strategies, in order to develop a deeper understanding of the function of particular dramatic devices. In accordance with the approach of Reading Drama, this paper privileges neither the theatre text nor the stage performance of Stephens plays. I will consider the playscript as a readable medium sui generis (Jahn 675), using it as the subject of my analysis, but will also take into account the fact that it functions as the basis of a play s performance. Without being able to study the stage performance of Stephens plays, I do acknowledge that their audience exists both of readers and viewers. In the next part of the chapter, the theories of narratology that will prove to be most significant for the analysis will be introduced and clarified NARRATOLOGY SOME STRUCTURALIST AND POST-CLASSICAL APPROACHES An indispensable theoretical building block for this paper s investigation into the strategies used for consciousness representation in Sea Wall and One Minute, is the theory of narratology. It will be used to distinguish the different narrative instances in the two plays,

13 8 with intent to investigate the methods applied to represent the mind of characters in mourning. This part of the chapter introduces the particular theories on which this paper will base its analysis. First, the structuralist approach to narratology, from which the theory of narrative levels originates, will be introduced generally and, thereafter, it will be clarified how the aspect of narratological levels is of particular use to this paper s dramatic analysis. Because the link between narrativity and drama has been disputed in the past, the strategy of adopting the theory of narratology to interpret plays should be introduced carefully. That is why this chapter, secondly, will present some insights from the narratology of drama, which is part of the post-classical narratological framework. It will introduce narratological arguments that validate the narrative nature of drama. Finally, the chapter will also focus on another part of post-classical narratology, namely the theory of the representation of fictional minds Structuralist Narratology and Narrative Levels Before scholars undertake a particular narratological investigation, they tend to give an overview of the history of narratology. Thus many introductions to narratology are to be found and to be drawn upon, when one is researching the theory. David Herman has accordingly provided The Cambridge Companion to Narrative with an introduction to the field of narratology and the subject of narrativity. His introductory chapter will be used in this paper. The book offers an insight into the developments of narrative theory, presenting articles on different subjects and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective. Herman s outline proves helpful if one tries to grasp the particularities of narratology. He touches upon significant elements of the first development of narratology and meticulously discusses the nature of narrative. Herman traces the beginnings of narratology, or la narratologie, back to the scholar Tzvetan Todorov, who coined the term to designate what he and other

14 9 structuralist theorists of story [...] conceived of as a science of narrative modeled after the pilot-science of Ferdinand de Saussure s structural linguistics (Herman, Introduction, 5). They employed tools of science to study the details of what makes texts, and other discourses, narratives. A narrative, in its turn, is defined as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process and change (Herman, Introduction, 3). It gives an account of what happened to particular people and of what it was like for them to experience what happened in particular circumstances and with specific consequences (Herman, Introduction, 3). Herman describes story and narrative as elements that are independent from the particular (kind of) text in which they occur. This distinction will prove to be an important argument for the inclusion of drama in the narratological debate. Herman goes on to further specify what a narrative is constituted of. He suggests that narratives present a structured time-course of particularized events and a disruption or disequilibrium of storytellers and interpreters mental model of the world (Herman, Introduction, 9). Narratives further convey what it s like to live through that disruption (Herman, Introduction, 9). This latter element is one of the indispensable conditions for calling a text a narrative and is affiliated with the study of representing characters mental life, which will be examined in this paper. If encoding the pressure of events on an experiencing human or at least human-like consciousness is one of the prototypical conditions of a narrative (Herman, Introduction, 11), then the question concerning the characteristics of that encoding might be raised. The investigation into the strategies that encode characters consciousness and their effects will be undertaken in this paper. Herman thus touches upon a number of key aspects of this paper in his introduction. Another element from narratology that this paper will focus on is the theory of narrative levels. In the analysis, the different narrative levels in plays will be determined and studied. Narrative levels are discussed in William Nelles book Frameworks: Narrative

15 10 Levels and Embedded Narrative, from which some elementary information about this theory will be taken. The book s main concern is about embedded narratives or framed narratives. Nelles approaches this subject through narrative theory and, in doing so, also provides insight into other subjects, such as historical authors, the general narrator, focalisation, narrative and narrative levels. In order to explain what narrative levels are, he starts with the discussion of what a narrator is. My definition [of narrative] will follow in stipulating that all narrative is entirely narrated by a narrator from beginning to end, Nelles states (59). This implies that every narrative requires one overarching, narrating instance, which Nelles calls the general narrator (59). He recognises the issue of characters speaking within a narrative, creating a narrative within another narrative, and he raises the question about what the relationship between these speeches and the general narration might be. He considers them to be a part of the general narrator s speech (Nelles 60), which means that they are embedded in the overarching narrative. In relation to this subject, Genette s theory of narrative levels is introduced (Nelles 61). Genette belonged to the tradition of structuralism, which is said to have given the decisive impulse for the formation of narratology as a methodologically coherent, structure-oriented variant of narrative theory (Meister). His theory provides a system to categorise the different narrators or narrating instances that can occur in a discourse and does this in a technically refined and descriptively accurate way (Nelles 126). 3 For these reasons, Nelles chooses to follow Genette s system and this paper will rely on it as well. It will draw upon Genette s terminology of extradiegetic and intradiegetic narrative instances; respectively instances that narrate a story from outside the fictional universe of a particular text ( The Extradiegetic Narrative Level ), and ones that exist within the storyworld of a particular text and transmit a story that is framed by the extradiegetic narrative level ( The Intradiegetic Narrative Level ). These categories can 3 Nelles expression of the benefits of Genette s system is cited from Susan Lanser.

16 11 be further specified as heterodiegetic (narrating from outside the fiction (Nelles 66)) and homodiegetic (playing a role in the fictional account of the novel s production (Nelles 69)). In the analysis, the paper will draw upon these categories to distinguish the different levels of narration in Stephens plays and determine the particular function of each level in the narratives Post-classical Narratology This chapter introduces some developments from post-classical narratology that will be useful for investigating the mind of characters in drama. Post-classical narratology originated from a poststructuralist framework of narratology in the 1990s and constituted a methodologically heterogeneous wave of critically oriented narratological models and theories (Meister). This paper will borrow insights from two of the dominant methodological paradigms of contemporary narratology, namely from transgeneric (or transmedial) approaches and cognitivist approaches to narratology (Meister), when drawing on the narratology of drama and on the theory of consciousness representation in fiction. First, the study of plays from a narratological perspective will be introduced and, thereafter, the chapter will focus on some theories of consciousness representation in fiction Narratology of Drama Introduction to the Transgeneric Theory Some scholars in the past, like Genette and F.K. Stanzel, considered the genre of drama devoid of narrativity, due to the fact that there is seemingly no clear narrator-instance in a play (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 355). Only recently has the dichotomy between narrative and drama come under attack from the narratological side (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 355) and have studies investigated the narrativity of drama. These studies all

17 12 contribute to the field of the narratology of drama. A well-structured and clear introduction to the narratology of drama can be found in Peter Hühn and Roy Sommer s article Narration in Poetry and Drama. Before discussing different theories, they first clarify how the examination of plays from a narratological perspective involves a transgeneric narratological approach (Hühn and Sommer 1). It contains a deviation from a classical narratological investigation (Hühn and Sommer 2), proceeding from the assumption that narratology s highly differentiated system of categories can be applied to the analysis of both poems and plays, possibly opening the way to a more precise definition of their respective generic specificity (Hühn and Sommer 1). As was indicated above with reference to Herman, the focal areas in the theory of narratology (story, narrative, narrator etc.) are to be distinguished from the particular discourse in which they occur. In accordance with this approach, elements like narrative, narrator and narrative levels can be studied in the genre of drama, even though stories in dramas do not seem to be mediated (but presented directly) (Hühn and Sommer 1). Hühn and Sommer show how the investigative scope of narratological research can be broadened beyond the border of the traditional focus on narrative fiction (2) and how this can contribute to a more nuanced view of narrative. The article goes on to present various points of view in the debate on narratology of drama, introducing theories by amongst others Seymour Chatman, Manfred Jahn and Monika Fludernik. These different approaches will be referred to in this paper, as they lend useful insights for its investigation of dramatic narrativity Theories Validating the Narrativity of Drama The view that narratological concepts can be applied to the genre of drama has been taken up by a number of narratologists, who have also provided particular arguments for this theoretical inclusion. In order to claim that drama should be included in the narratological

18 13 debate, this paper will draw upon the work by three scholars. It focuses on the article Narrative and Drama and the book Towards a Natural Narratology by Monika Fludernik, as well as the article Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity: Some further Steps towards a Narratology of Drama by Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer. A first helpful source for the analysis in this paper is the work of Fludernik. Her views on the nature of narrative and on the need for analysing plays level of mediation serve as an indication of this paper s focal points. Following Fludernik s insights, the paper will consider the notion of consciousness as a key element in narratives (specifically directing the attention to drama) and will cater to the need for examining plays narrative elements. In Towards a Natural Narratology, Fludernik submits narrative theory to a radical reconceptualisation and reorientation (Nünning and Sommer 331), when she states that narrativity is a function of narrative texts and centres on experientiality of an anthropomorphic nature ( Natural Narratology, 26). 4 Experientiality is Fludernik s term for denoting the presence of an embodied consciousness, an experiencing subject, in a fictional text and she redefines narrative by establishing that experientiality is the condition for considering a certain discourse to be a narrative ( Natural Narratology, 12-3). With this radical view, she develops a more inclusive definition of narrativity and ensures drama s position in the narratological debate. In her article Narrative and Drama, she further explains the repercussions of her definition of narrativity for the genre of drama and states: All drama, in fact, needs to have characters on stage, and from this minimal requirement narrativity is immediately assured, if one defines narrativity as I do in Towards a Natural Narratology (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 360). If one follows Fludernik s argument, the focus of narratology thus lies in the element of experientiality, an element that will be central to this paper s analysis. Her emphatic claim for the narrativity of drama will not only support the 4 From this point on, Fludernik s Towards a Natural Narratology will be referred to as Natural Narratology.

19 14 analysis argument. Her ideas of foregrounding characters consciousness in the consideration of narratives will also prove to be relevant, because they confirm the importance of investigating those particular consciousnesses in the narratives. Furthermore, Fludernik goes on to mention that, besides the fact that plays are narratives because of their feature of experientiality, they also display attributes that point out a narrating instance. Her stance in favour of the examination of the discourse level of drama, backs up this paper s claim that the narrating side of plays needs clarification. Fludernik states: The main questions regarding the narratological analysis of drama [...] do not touch on the characters and event structure (the story level) or on the temporal dimensions of drama [...]; they touch instead on the level of what I call the discourse level of drama. In analogy with novels and films, the discourse level refers to the level of mediation. (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 361) She provides two different interpretations of how the discourse level of drama might be analysed, distinguishing dramatic discourse as equivalent to the performance text (a view which considers that each performance has its discourse (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 363)) or as equivalent to the playscript. This paper will not focus on the particularities of Fludernik s categorisation, but will adopt her concept of the dramatic discourse level, as corresponding to the playscript or dramatic text (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 363). In this view, the performance-related features typical of the stage, which are contained in the script, all form part of the discourse level and can be analysed as the author s narration that is to be realised in performance (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 363). This interpretation allows a comprehensive narratological analysis of the dramatic text, which forms the basis of a performance. Additionally, the paper adopts her suggestion that the characteristics of this level in drama call for investigation. Further on in her article,

20 15 Fludernik introduces Nünning and Sommer s essay in the same volume, when she refers to analyses that investigate that discourse level and that provide more detailed accounts of narrative aspects in drama (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 366). She signals the need for identifying the genre s typical narrating instances, as it has been excluded from the narratological debate in the past because of its supposed lack of them (Fludernik, Narrative and Drama, 366). The article Diegetic and Mimetic Narrativity: Some further Steps towards a Narratology of Drama by Nünning and Sommer indeed presents a helpful theory for singling out particular elements of mediation in plays. Nünning and Sommer offer new insights into the narrativity of drama, by clarifying how they distinguish different kinds and degrees of narrativity (331). In addition, they show that plays can be classified as narratives not only because they offer the representation of a series of events or display the eventfulness of the story (Nünning and Sommer 332), but also because they carry many diegetic narrative elements. They try to give up the cherished normative dichotomies between fiction and drama according to which drama is without narrational mediation 5, and explain that the use of narrative experiments in plays was a central feature of stage plays, even long before novels emerged as the dominant narrative genre (Nünning and Sommer 336). Plays displayed a use of diegetic elements (such as narrator figures and storytelling in the performance), which helped stage the expositions effectively and helped overcome limitations of time and setting, and they thus demonstrated narrative features in drama (Nünning and Sommer 336). This historical argument forms the main reason why definitions of narrativity can be applied to drama, according to Nünning and Sommer (335). They clarify that narrative and storytelling played a central role both in Classical drama and in the medieval mystery plays [...], and thus since the very beginnings of English drama (Nünning and Sommer 335-6). By 5 Nünning and Sommer cite Keir Elam.

21 16 focussing on the plays themselves, they are able to further confirm the narrativity of plays. A first step in their account, involves describing how they identify two kinds of narrativity, namely diegetic and mimetic narrativity. Mimetic narrativity should be regarded as the representation of a temporal and/or causal sequence of events, with the degree of narrativity hinging upon the degree of eventfulness, whereas diegetic narrativity refers to the verbal [...] transmission of narrative content, to the representation of a speech act of telling a story by an agent called a narrator (Nünning and Sommer 338). Subsequently, this distinction is not considered to be absolute, but serves as a scale for mapping what degree of diegetic and mimetic narrativity a certain discourse has. Nünning and Sommer point out the high degree of mimetic narrativity in drama (339), but make clear that the genre also features a broad range of diegetic narrative elements (338). They acknowledge the fact that drama is a genre that makes use of showing to convey a story (mimesis) (341), but also emphasise the other side of the scale and direct the attention towards the diegetic side of plays. This inclusive approach regarding the narrativity of drama fits the paper s method of Reading Drama well, as it allows a detailed narratological study of drama. The paper will most importantly focus on the diegetic side of plays, in order to make sense of how they make use of specific diegetic narrative elements to convey a character s consciousness. The mimetic side of plays will be considered to the extent that it clarifies what is determined by the diegetic elements. Nünning and Sommer present a broad range of such diegetic elements in their article, to show just how widespread diegetic narrativity is in plays (340), and introduce aspects which this paper will also focus on, like stage directions and narrating characters (341). They discuss plays narrative levels, incorporating notions of extradiegetic and intradiegetic elements into dramatic analysis (Nünning and Sommer 339). The article will prove to be a helpful guide for pointing out which specific diegetic narrative features appear in Stephens plays, paving the way for an analysis of their influence on character representation.

22 Representing Fictional Minds: A Classical Approach and Postclassical Approaches As a theoretical background for analysing the characters mind in Stephens plays Sea Wall and One Minute, this paper will rely on theories from (post-) classical narratology developed for the examination of fictional minds. Each theory offers a unique contribution to understanding more about how writers might convey information about a character s consciousness. This part of the chapter first introduces the different theories on the basis of Herman s article Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, which also offers insight into some particular kinds of inferences readers might make about characters consciousness in a narrative. Thereafter, the section will go on to explain the specific theories of consciousness in more detail. The speech-category approach to consciousness representation by Dorrit Cohn will be discussed, after which the theory of the thought-action continuum by Alan Palmer will be introduced. Additionally, the insights by Marco Caracciolo and Cécile Guédon concerning the role of textual gaps and figurative speech in representing minds will be explained Introduction Herman s Cognition, emotion, and consciousness seeks to offer insight into how readers interpret particular textual details as information about characters attempts to make sense of the world around them (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 245). The article both presents some general theories concerning the strategies for conveying characters mind, and distinguishes some categories of inferences readers might make about characters mental life on the basis of textual cues. This paper will use Herman s article as a guideline for the overview of the particular theories that will be used. He gives a concise outline of Cohn s

23 18 theory which Palmer termed the speech-category approach (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 247). This approach will be introduced in more detail below. Based on the theory of speech representations, the speech-category approach has provided important insights into how specific textual cues can be used to indicate a more or less mediated relationship between narrators discourse and the subjective awareness of particular characters (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 250). Apart from this theory, Herman also introduces Palmer s idea that consciousness representation theories have focussed too narrowly on the strategy of inner speech to present consciousness ( Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 250). This paper will use Palmer s claims and ideas, and will focus on them in more detail below. As Herman goes on to further discuss theories of mind, he introduces particular models of inferences that readers might make about the states and processes of fictional minds ( Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 250). He explains that certain textual cues give specific kinds of information to the reader about a character s mental life. These pieces of information can induce particular types of inferences. Two of these kinds of inferences are of particular use for this paper s analysis, namely those concerning emotions and emotional discourse, and those regarding experientiality and qualia. These inferences are significant to the analysis, as they might help in investigating indications of feelings of grief in Sea Wall and One Minute. Herman explains how inferences of emotions and emotional discourse rely on the constructionist concept of emotionology, which can be clarified as a framework for conceptualizing emotions, their causes, and how participants in discourse are likely to display them (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 255). This framework allows readers to classify particular utterances and actions in narratives (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 255), which can provide this paper with the appropriate base for categorising the information about the mental life of the characters in Stephens plays.

24 19 The paper will investigate whether the theories for examining strategies of consciousness representation (which will be introduced below) might lead towards an insight into particular emotional cues that might be classified as evoking grief. Further on, Herman discusses the inferences based on experientiality and qualia in a certain narrative. Readers might interpret certain textual cues as information about what it is like for a embodied human or at least human-like consciousness to experience the pressure of events (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 256). In his account, Herman is referring to Fludernik and her theory of experientiality, according to which an experiencing subject is the condition for narrativity. Unless a text registers the quality of that experience, Herman explains with regard to inferences based on experientiality, it is not a narrative. Herman here links Fludernik s condition for narrativity to the term qualia, which is used to characterize the qualitative, experiential, or felt properties of mental states ( Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 256) 6 and serves as a basis for readers to collect information about characters consciousness. On the basis of the knowledge of what it is like for characters to experience a certain feeling, readers can grasp an aspect of the characters mental life. An important element to investigate with regard to the characters in Sea Wall and One Minute is the way they cope with the unsettling events that occur in their life. By paying attention to characters experience and to qualia, by means of theories of consciousness representation, this analysis might find out more about the characters way of dealing with the loss of a child Studying Characters Mind The first theory of consciousness representation that is introduced in this section is the speech-category approach by Cohn. Although this theory technically belongs to the classical period of narratology, it is nevertheless introduced in the section of post-classical approaches 6 Herman here quotes Janet Levin.

25 20 to narratology. The reason for this is that the theory tries to grasp the way in which narratives can represent characters thought processes, which is a project that resembles the cognitivist method in post-classical narratology. Cohn s theory is to be regarded classical because it posits an analogy between speech representation and the study of consciousness. It is characterised by the structuralist tendency of focusing narrowly on textual features. Yet, this very study of consciousness forms an important component of post-classical narratology (in which readers responses become the focus), because it anticipates many of the post-classical concerns and serves as an incentive for further investigation into consciousness representation in narrative. In this paper, the theory will be applied to drama, in order to gain information about characters emotional and experiential state. As mentioned above, speechcategory approach is the term coined by Palmer for Cohn s theory (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 247). This term indicates the theory s assumption that the categories that are applied to fictional speech can be unproblematically applied to fictional thought (Palmer 53) and denotes how the concepts of the theory of speech representation correspond to the Cohn s findings in her study of fictional minds. Additionally, in the context of Palmer s term, theorists have introduced the terms direct thought, indirect thought and free indirect thought into Cohn s theory for the concepts which she initially named quoted monologue, psycho-narration and narrated monologue, respectively (Herman, Cognition, emotion, and consciousness, 248) 7 8. In her book Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, she carries out an examination into the presentation of consciousness in fiction and approaches this subject from a typological perspective (Cohn 9-10). She tackles the subject of fictional thought, primarily focussing on 7 The newer terms for thought representation mirror the terminology of the speech categories ( direct speech, indirect speech and free indirect speech ), which belong to the theory of speech representation. 8 In my analysis, I will adopt the newer terms for the sake of avoiding confusion between the terms monologue on the one hand and quoted monologue on the other hand.

26 21 the part of the mind known as inner speech, the highly verbalized flow of self-conscious thought (Palmer 53), and uses the above-mentioned concepts as a starting-point for distinguishing the different techniques used in prose fiction to render consciousness. The three modes occur in what she calls third-person narration 9 and can be defined as follows: 1. psycho-narration: the narrator s discourse about a character s consciousness; 2. quoted monologue: a character s mental discourse; 3. narrated monologue: a character s mental discourse in the guise of the narrator s discourse (Cohn 14). In her book, Cohn analyses each mode in detail and then goes on to analyse first-person narration. In this part of the book, she also introduces the genre of drama into her analysis and touches upon the subject rather briefly, when comparing her findings with regard to the monologue in first-person prose narratives with monologues in drama. This mention, however, constitutes an apt starting point for linking Cohn s theory to the analysis of Stephens plays. This paper will investigate how her theory is useful for the analysis, taking into account Cohn s ideas concerning drama and arguing for a speech-category approach to drama. A second theory that will be useful for the analysis is the one presented in Palmer s book Fictional Minds. This post-classical narratological theory was to an extent triggered by Cohn s theory in that it responds to its lack of providing a convincing explanation or even description of how the whole minds of characters in action are constructed (Palmer 1). Palmer identifies a number of problems of the speech-category approach, of which perhaps the most important one is the tendency to give the impression that characters minds really only consist of a private passive flow of consciousness (Palmer 59). He argues that Cohn s treatment presents only a limited perspective on the representation of characters mental life. Palmer sets out to investigate the aspect of narrative that has scarcely been paid attention to, 9 In the Notes section of her book, Cohn explains that she uses the traditional distinction third-person narration and first-person narration instead of Genette s terms heterodiegetic and homodiegetic, for the purpose of familiarity (272-3). In this analysis, Genette s terms will be applied.

27 22 namely the whole of the social mind in action (7), and claims that from characters behaviour and speech readers infer the workings of fictional minds (11). His study forms a useful theoretical addition to the investigation in this paper, as it allows the analysis of minds in drama to go beyond merely the study of speech. It provides the opportunity to look at what characters do and to distinguish what these actions may imply for their mental life. A particularly useful section from Fictional Minds is the section on The Fictional Mind in Action, where Palmer distinguishes the subframe thought-action continuum within the continuing-consciousness frame, which is a concept denoting the way in which readers determine a character s continuing consciousness out of scattered passages on that character (Palmer 15). The thought-action continuum, then, points to the large grey area of statement in fiction, where the separation between what can be considered as information about a thought and information about an action is not always clear (Palmer 212). This paper will rely on this concept in order to be able to investigate in which way a character s actions are indicative of his/her mental state. Finally, the theory presented by Caracciolo and Guédon will be drawn on in this analysis to investigate what lies behind the external display of characters mind in narratives and to study the inherently qualitative dimension of characters mental lives, the irreducibly private aspects of characters experiences (Caracciolo and Guédon 47). Like Palmer s study built on Cohn s, Caracciolo and Guédon s builds on Palmer s, as it concurs with its critique of the verbal bias in narratological discussions yet points its attention to textual gaps and figurative language as ways to pre-verbally or non-verbally represent characters mental life (Caracciolo and Guédon 47). They choose to look beyond the more public side of mind representation (statements and actions) and investigate the subjective experience of a character, focussing on the qualities of that experience. Caracciolo and Guédon s chapter thus examines the qualia (Caracciolo and Guédon 47) referred to above

28 23 and will help this paper s analysis to develop towards a deeper understanding of how grief might be represented in Sea Wall and One Minute through a depiction of how characters experience certain events. Caracciolo and Guédon s investigation into how omitted information and syntactic or typographical discontinuities (Caracciolo and Guédon 50) provide readers with knowledge about characters consciousness and into how metaphors offer a striking affective correlate for a character s state of mind (Caracciolo and Guédon 53) offers this paper an additional theoretical guideline for the examination of the encoding of characters minds in narratives ANALYSING STEPHENS PLAYS The rest of the paper will consist of an analysis of Stephens plays Sea Wall and One Minute. The paper seeks to gain more insight into how characters feel (emotionology) and how characters cope with these feelings (qualia). I will investigate this in order to gain more knowledge about the way the experience of grief is encoded in the plays. In the analysis, the Handbook of Bereavement Research and Practice: Advances in Theory and Intervention and J. William Worden s Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy will be used to explore affective expressions and emotions in the plays. The books give insight into how the expression of grief can be delimited and thus provide this paper with the necessary basis for an emotionological study of Stephens plays. To examine the mental life of the characters in the plays, the paper will single out the different narrative levels that constitute them and focus on them individually. Furthermore, I will study what particular kind of strategy each level can make use of to convey insight into characters mental life. These different strategies and their specific function in the representation of minds will be examined, by means of the abovediscussed theories of consciousness representation. The goal of the analysis is to try to