Monologues In Kolt(?)s's Plays

As one of the most important playwrights in France at the end of the 20th century,Bernard-Marie Kolt(?)s(1948-1989)characterizes his plays with prominent and myriad monologues.This paper makes an analysis of Kolt(?)s's dramatic monologues from the perspective of their dramaticism,narrativism and lyricism.The dissertation is comprised of an introduction,four chapters and a conclusion.The introduction relates Kolt(?)s's lifetime and his writing career,highlighting the events that might have spurred his inspiration.A general review is made on research on Kolt(?)s's plays,dramatic monologues and monologue in Kolt(?)s's plays.It serves as a prelude to what follows and a reference to later researchers,as such thematic studies remain nascent in China.Briefing of my research purview and methodology is as follows.A study of the interpretations of Aristotle,Hegel,Szondi,Lehmann and Sarrazac on drama reveals that monologue is a dramatic discourse laden with multiple heterogeneous factors,a causal impetus for dramatic evolution.This is why Kolt(?)s heavily manipulates monologues in his plays.A cross-genre examination of Kolt(?)s's plays provides us with an avenue to find Kolt(?)s's innovation in dramatic discourse and helps us to visualize the position of Kolt(?)s's monologues in the course of dramatic evolution driven by monologues.In chapter one,after an examination of the definition of monologue through a selective comparison of representative samples,we point out that monologue as a concept is gaining momentum in its inclusiveness.By sorting out the history of the evolution of monologue,we find out that monologue has long been significantly and broadly employed,from ancient Greece to the Renaissance,before classical dramatic norms took form.The decline of monologue resulted from the establishment of the dominance of the classical dramatic norms and their long-term influence on theFrench theater.It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that drama gradually broke away from the classical bonds and rehabilitated.The authors elucidate two features of monologue that are of most prominence.One concerns the content of monologue,a disclosure of the bosom of the characters.The other touches on the role monologue plays in the structure of drama,which functions as a promoter in plot progression in the dramatic design of Aristotle,classical dramatic norms,and Hegel's aesthetics of drama,Such function dwindles or vanishes in later contemporary plays with the development of drama and transcendence of this design.We make a tentative definition of monologue in terms of Kolt(?)s plays and specify the purview of our study.The second chapter begins with a discussion of the meaning of dramaticism.Dramaticism is defined as an assemblage of action-related,situation-transforming and plot-promoting features.In terms of contemporary dramatic monologues, Kolt(?)s's feature their compulsory partaking,namely,their uttermost involvement of the receptorsin the monologues.His monologues are dialogic,causative for the receptors,thus turning words into action.For the monologist,the dialogue results in his/her conflict with the others internalized by him/her.The dramaticism of his monologues is also reflected in their cross-act and cross-space-time interactions and the causal logic within the monologues.The third chapter deals with the role of monologue as a narrative instrument in Kolt(?)s's plays.Narration in Kolt(?)s's play stakes two forms,one fulfilled by a visible narrator,the other performed by an omnipotent invisible speaker.The former expands time and space of his plays and deepens the psychological expressiveness of the characters.The latter provides with an intermediate space of interaction,where the drama and the narrative texts are conjugated,extending the stories within beyond the plays.New plots non-existent in the plays are displayed through the narrator,formulating a multi-dimensional sphere via the liaison of drama and narration,where the gap between literary genres is banished,meanwhile supporting the characters with historical background and psychological expressiveness.The fourth chapter,analyzing the lyricism of Kolt(?)s's monologues,points out that lyricism of monologue epitomizes Kolt(?)s's understanding of language and drama. Kolt(?)s dramatic monologues are a perfect manifestation of the artistic combination of lyricism and language,where language is the body,the prop of being.On the one hand,characters in Kolt(?)s's plays express their emotions by lyrist monologues and strive to find an ideal place for their own existence in the relationships between the world and others.On the other hand, Kolt(?)s,regarding language as the foundation of drama,engages his characters with constant talks through myriad monologues,and,aware of the limitations of language,achieves meaning appreciation through an artistic use of language,extending poetic functions of language beyond verbal limits. Kolt(?)s derives his predilection for monologue from its liberty in all literary genres.He never stopped his cross-genre exploration,from his initial adaptation of literary works into plays to later playwriting together with novel and film script writing.To choose monologue means to choose an inclusive and disparate dramatic approach.Never pioneering and revolutionary, Kolt(?)s's plays are boldly innovative and a carry-on ofdiverse literary and artistic forms and even forms of other fields.In his research on the fictionalization of literary genres,Bakhtin declares that fiction is a relatively free form among all literary genres,and in contrast,drama inclines towards normative rigidity in the course of development.Unfortunately Bakhtin stated the truth.Drama seems to be trapped in a weird track:dramatic poetics and playwriting approach of all kinds straggle to establish norms for later comers on the ground of a sum up of the previous dramatic norms. Kolt(?)s'splays serve as a revelation to us that cross-genre monologues with infinite possibilities may be the antidote for drama to escape the Bakhtinian trap.