Zornytsky A. Dramaturgy and Historical-Cultural Context (A Study of Plays by Tennessee Williams)

The present dissertation is dedicated to the study of development process peculiarities of European and American dramatic poetry and theatrical practice of the XXth century, singling out certain elements of the latter, which enable the investigator to state the fact of impetuous revival of dramaturgy – the specific phenomenon, which may be rendered as a metatype of spectacular arts. The research presents an analysis of historical and existentional peculiarities of how a piece of dramatic poetry can function in cultural universe as a natural container of complex phenomena. Special attention is paid to certain extra-literary qualities of drama, which it necessarily achieves while integrating in the multidimentional sphere of cultural practice. Theatrical, cinematographic and national-cultural development and transformation of a piece of fiction are interpreted as its self-development, a natural and inevitable actualization of certain traits of its literary essence. Dramaturgy is viewed by the author in wide cultural context, synthesizing artistic traditions of various types of art, canons of sub- and countercultural phenomena of a particular region as well as the elements of major philosophic trends, all of them taken during a certain historical time period. Besides, the investigation focuses on the cases of dramaturgy’s intercultural transformation, which are thoroughly analyzed as a new type examples of drama’s self-development, provoked by the change of receptive paradigm and typology of literary and theatrical phenomena, which took place against the background of concrete cultural sphere and its canons.