Local Color from Marg dar Paeez (Death in Autumn) to Fen Parallelism in Regional Dramas of Akbar Radi and Caryl Churchill

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Ph.D. Candidate of English Literature, Kish International Campus, University of Tehran, Iran.

2 Ph.D. of English Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

     Regional literature, as one of the literary genres, strives to depict the geographical and climatic features of a particular region in the manners, principles, attitudes, beliefs, and the language of their inhabitants. The present article, attempts to offer a parallel analysis of these features in two works of Mage dar Paeez (Death in Autumn) by Akbar Radi and Fen by Caryl Churchill. Born in Rasht, north of Iran, Akbar Radi shows great concern to portray the everyday life of the people of his homeland. Almost all of his plays have Gilan as their setting and are full of references to the distinctive lifestyle and beliefs of the region’s inhabitants, among which Mage dar Paeez (Death in Autumn) could be considered a remarkable example. Caryl Churchill, however, is not a dramatist with regional concerns. She is known to be a writer with feminist and leftist tendencies who mostly depicts the lives of lower class women. Nevertheless, local color can be traced in some of her works, notably Fen. In both plays of Marg dar Paeez and Fen, regional features, play determining role in the overall lives of the characters and their enactments. The article tries to offer a parallel reading of the regional elements with recourse to the five following categories: geographical condition, agricultural and habitual features, dialects, economic relations and finally, attitudes and manners of live. The study begins by offering a background of regional literature both in Iran and western world, and respectively, casts a look at regional dramas and by referring to Radi and Churchill, attempts to offer a background to their works and the influence of regional perspectives in their dramatic productions. Marg dar Paeez sketches out the life of a peasant family in one of the rural areas of Gilan, north of Iran. Fen, on the other hand, is the manifestation of the lives of local inhabitants of east England. The five elements mentioned above, offered by Abdol Ali Dastgheib in his article, "On Regional Literature", are among the general theorizations done sketching out the features of regional literature. The features under question are then studied in a parallel comparison between the two works. In each case several examples are offered to show the traces of that regional element in the work. The comparison as such, not only highlights the regional features of each play individually, but also indicates the similarities and differences of the aforementioned criteria in the two selected plays. Meanwhile, the article also traces the cultural and social elements resulting from as much as leading to the environmental give- and- takes which are inevitable outcomes of such cohabitations. The study as such aims to come up with two conclusions: first that in both dramas the climate plays a determining role in the anthropological as well as ethical habits of local communities and secondly, despite cultural and sociological differences along with the various approaches of the authors in dealing with subjects as such, these plays encapsulate significant elements in common which, in turn, could result into a better and deeper understanding of various cultures.
 
 

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Performing Arts & Music
Volume 21, Issue 2
December 2016
Pages 33-40

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