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123753

Narrating Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/ Sister Plays

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Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Abstract

The Brother/Sister Plays is a trilogy written by the Afro-American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney.The book includes three plays written in separate (In The Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet).They can be read and acted either separately or collectively like many other trilogies. But unlike most plays, The Brother / Sister Plays bear a lot of narrative levels that relate them safely to the art of narratology. Although it is not widely accepted as a narrative form, drama lies at the core of narratological studies. Depending on the different definitions and degrees of narrativity, writers such as Manfred Jahn, Monika Fludernik, Seymour Chatman, Ansgar Nunning and Roy Sommer, to mention few examples, try to apply narrative elements to drama. Their steps towards a narratology of drama are three. First, they state the common literary devices used in both drama and novel (theme, plot, sub-plot, characters, conflict, suspense, poetic justice, ending and closure). Second, they identify pure narrative or diegetic features that linger in drama (narrative agent, storytelling and point of view).Third, they clarify that even mimetic features that are totally dramatic (stage directions and metadramatic elements) can be studied as narrative. The present paper attempts to re- read The Brother/Sister Plays from a narratological perspective, selecting four narrative/dramatic elements – narrator, storytelling, stage directions and metadrama – to achieve two goals. First, that the mixture of narration and performance empowers both telling and theatricality and changes the purpose of narration and performance from mere entertainment and fascination to tackling serious issues. Second, the fusion of narrative techniques into dramatic actions helps the playwright dramatize the untold stories of West African Cosmology, involving the audience in all cases.

DOI

10.21608/ttaip.2019.123753

Keywords

Diegesis, mimesis, Narratology

Authors

First Name

Ebtesam

Last Name

M. M. El Shokrofy

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Department of English Language, Faculty of Education, Damanhour University, Egypt

Email

ebtesam_elshokrofy@yahoo.com

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Orcid

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Volume

1

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

18555

Issue Date

2019-12-01

Receive Date

2018-05-01

Publish Date

2019-12-01

Page Start

180

Page End

199

Print ISSN

2636-4069

Online ISSN

2735-3451

Link

https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/article_123753.html

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https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=123753

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10

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,357

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Textual Turnings: An International Peer-Reviewed Journal in English Studies

Publication Link

https://ttaip.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Narrating Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/ Sister Plays

Details

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Article

Created At

23 Jan 2023