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" Travels through the Foreign Imaginary on the Plautine Stage "
Menon, Deepti R.
Dutsch, Dorota
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1114391
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2407539610
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| Main Entry
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Dutsch, Dorota
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Menon, Deepti R.
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| Title & Author
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Travels through the Foreign Imaginary on the Plautine Stage\ Menon, Deepti R.Dutsch, Dorota
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| College
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University of California, Santa Barbara
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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185
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| Abstract
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This dissertation explores the ways in which Plautus’s comedies, inherently translated works, negotiate foreign characters and foreignness within their hybrid theatrical and extra-theatrical spaces. This project is part of a larger discourse on the tension between Greek, Roman, and non-Greek foreign elements in Plautus’s comedies. The three plays I analyze above display foreignness through particular theatrical elements: Curculio's stage situations, Poenulus's characters, and Persa's use of props and spatial vocabulary. In all of these elements, two things are brought into prominence: the negotiations of identity and the use of what I call “foreign imaginary,” both of which show the ultimate breakdown of any dichotomy between the foreign and the familiar. I have coined the term “foreign imaginary” to refer to the foreign parts of the world which exist just out of sight of the audience, offstage. The foreign imaginary is almost always brought into a play when a character or object appears onstage. Moreover, it is usually an object which is considered distantly foreign (a coin with an elephant on it, as seen in the Curculio, or a tiara and a pair of fancy slippers, as in the Persa), and frequently resolves a major conflict within the play. However, we must not forget that at least some of the “ordinary” Greek characters appeared from the same entrances onstage. It is therefore possible that the lines between “foreign,” “imaginary and foreign” “familiar,” “domestic,” or any other demarcations, are (or should be) blurred. This constant renegotiation of categories and boundaries is what leads me to a Bhabhaian reading of Plautine comedy.
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Bhabha, Homi
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Comedy
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Foreign
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Plautus
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Postcolonial
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Translation
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