The Individual Tragedy In Amadeus From The Perspective Of Foucault’s Theory Of Discipline

Peter Shaffer(1926 — 2016)was a distinguished English playwright and screenwriter who was active in last century.As one of his blockbusters,Amadeus(1979)won the Evening Standard Drama Award,the Players’ London Theatre Critics’ Award and the Tony Award,and was adapted into a film in 1984 which won the Academy Award.It presents the life tragedies of genius Mozart and mediocrity Salieri,vividly stages the social reality and social ethos of the eighteenth-century Vienna,and enlightens people to think of the relation between human nature and social regulation.As most scholars and critics focus on the historical accuracy and the thematic metaphors of the play but few manages to combine the individual tragedy with the social causes based on historical dimensions,this thesis tries to find a new interpretation of the play with the help of Foucault’s theory of discipline which in detail elucidates the power mechanism of European society from the classical age to modern times.Foucault’s theory of discipline is adopted in this thesis,which helps to make a dialectical analysis and explanation of the complicated relationship between the individuals and the society in the play.The major concepts used in this study include disciplinary power,the mechanism of “Panopticon”,disciplinary society,docile body and the mechanism of punishment.This thesis mainly discusses and analyzes the individual tragedy under the disciplinary power of the society based on Foucaults’ theory of discipline from three aspects.First,this thesis explicates the disciplinary society in different historical dimensions,and expounds the relations among the universe of the play,the real universe in that era,and the universe of the author in the text.Second,it deciphers the social actions,mental state,and social identities of the characters in the disciplinary society of Vienna.Third,it interprets the social causes of the two leading characters’ tragic fates under the mechanism of punishment.Therefore,this thesis has come to the conclusion as follows.In the first place,the universe of the play is historically precise which conforms to the real universe of that era,Vienna in the play is a disciplinary society,and the story which takes place in the eighteenth century virtually expresses a modern ideological theme of the author’s era.In the second place,Mozart is “the abnormal” in the disciplinary society of Vienna,and on the contrary,Salieri,as the model of “docile body”,assumes dual identities of the supervisor and the supervised.They are both under the universal supervision represented by the two “Venticelli”.Salieri’s betrayal to God exactly reveals the conflict between human nature and social regulation.Last,the mechanism of punishment in mental field and social realm leads to the two leading characters’ tragic endings.Hopefully,these statements may help later researchers and critics comprehend a more profound meaning of the play’s social and historical depth.This thesis is composed of three parts.The first part is the introduction,which consists of the motivation and the significance of this study,the literature review of international and domestic research and the critical approach.The second part is the discussion and analysis,which includes three chapters,namely,the disciplinary society in different universes,the individuals under the disciplinary power,as well as the mechanism of punishment and the individual tragedy.The final part is the conclusion which summarizes the main points of view of this thesis.