Reading Edward Bond's Lear from An Agitprop Perspective

Murtadha Adel Bader
Suleyman Demirel University, Turkey

ABSTRACT

The twentieth century had witnessed several hard events which resulted in the appearance of many literary movements in general and dramatic ones in particular. Those dramatic movements mainly used the term "agitprop" in order to provoke the public against the corrupted political figures and systems in addition to the current miserable social condition. It is worth mentioning that the Communist Party at the beginning of the twentieth century adopted the term "Agitprop" to propagate its ideas and thoughts popular. Edward Bond (1934- ) is considered as one of the finest English dramatists who became distinctive for employing the agitprop drama in his plays in the second half of the twentieth century. In most of his plays, Bond is characterized by showing shocking events accompanied by extreme violence to provoke his audience and make them aware of the socio-political flaws in the society that they belong to. This paper aims at shedding light on the agitprop drama as depicted by Bond's Lear as his well-known play.

KEYWORDS

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