Dramatic Allusion and Referencing Literary Tradition in Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Article 2, Volume 79, Issue 1, July 2022, Pages 45-67 PDF (892.39 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2022.265685 | ||
| Author | ||
| Khaled Saad Sirwah | ||
| Abstract | ||
| The present paper seeks to demonstrate how T. S. Eliot’s concept of “literary tradition” can be revealed through the device of dramatic allusion in Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman (2017). To date, this play has not been investigated through the theoretical lens of dramatically alluded literary traditions despite the fact that the text abounds in a great many complex references to various predating works of art; such references have proven to constitute a whole allusive spectrum of literary traditions. Thus, the main question addressed here can be formulated as such: In what way is the device of dramatic allusion revealing of literary traditions in Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman? Towards answering this question, the paper has reached and discussed two main findings. First, literary tradition has been achieved in The Ferryman via two main levels of allusion: explicit referencing and implicit referencing. Second, Butterworth’s typology of referencing into different types (political, historical, poetic, dramatic, and classical references) has enabled him to detect “the historical sense” in his play. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Dramatic allusion; The Ferryman; Jez Butterworth, referencing; T. S. Eliot’s literary tradition | ||
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