Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams
an outline of the premises of classical narrative studies. Then I will explain how postclassical narrative studies expand and complement the ideas of the existing theories. This is relevant because postclassical narratologists have introduced the inclusion of drama in narrative. Especially in cognitive narrative studies, drama is a fruitful corpus for analysis. I then explain the theory of Palmer as a cognitivist and how and to what extent I use his theory in my own model of analysing playscripts. In order to do so, I place Palmer’s work within the context of cognitivist ideas, and then particularly concentrate on his idea of intermentality. After explaining Palmer in-depth, I will consider the status of drama in narrative studies: that is, I will examine how drama was dealt with before, how its status changed and what new directions and studies there are today as well as what is still missing.
In Chapter Three, I will concentrate on character and consciousness construction. After an examination of previous work that has been done regarding characterisation and character analysis in drama studies, I will focus in detail on studies that are on the following categories:
1) character and consciousness in the embedded and doubly embedded narratives in playscripts;
2) character and consciousness in the stage directions;
3) character and consciousness in the introductory and explanatory passages.
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For all these subcategories I will elaborate on existing studies, what is missing and how I would like to complement those studies with the help of a cognitivist approach.
Chapters Four and Five introduce my model of consciousness construction and how one can apply it in the different categories of the playscript in order to construct the mentalities of the characters. I will be using my corpus and demonstrate my ideas with numerous examples from the plays. I will have distinct subchapters not only for the different parts of each play but also for the analysis of each playwright separately. This provides me with enough data to make a comparison between the playwrights at the end of each chapter regarding the way they construct the mentalities of the characters in their plays on an intramental level.
Chapters Six, Seven and Eight focus in detail on the dynamics of group formation and intermentality in all the plays. Even with regard to the intermental aspect of consciousness construction each playwright has an individual style based on the thought-action continuum. This will alter the dynamics of the interpretation of the plays. In Chapter Six, I will analyse Ibsen’s plays, separately in a subchapter. In Chapter Seven, I will do the same with Wilde’s plays and in Chapter Eight with Shaw’s. In these three chapters, the focus will be on the different types of intermentality between the characters in the plays. I will draw attention to the thought-action continuum and show that the dynamics of a play varies depending on its inclination to rely on thought, or action based group formations. The three playwrights differ in the application of the thought-action frame, not only on an intramental level, but also on an intermental level, and this results in very subtle differences in a genre that might be regarded as overtly similar.
In my conclusion, Chapter Nine, I will sum up my research and I will also propose that this method is applicable to drama of all periods and is by no means limited to either (social) realist plays, or plays with extensive introductions. Moreover, I make suggestions on how a cognitive approach toward drama could be developed further in order to achieve a more comprehensive study of drama. By taking a cognitive approach, the study of drama will no longer neglect playscripts as non-narrative or inferior narrative instances and will be able to come to new insights about how to approach not only playscripts as storyworlds, but within the same framework examine characters and groups in an intermental setting.
1 In his Fictional Minds Palmer defines the thought-action continuum as follows: “Talk of decoding action statements into consciousness statements can, however, be misleading if it gives the impression that, notwithstanding the intimate and complex connection between the two, thought and action are easily separable. They are not, and many of the statements in fictional narratives inhabit the large gray area between the two. I shall refer to this phenomenon as the thought-action continuum” (2004: 212).
2 This brief summary of Palmer’s ideas is mainly based on his article “Universal Minds” (Palmer 2007) and his Fictional Minds (Palmer 2004).
3 The concept of Theory of the Mind and how characters are dealt with as if they were real, is further explored in Chapter Two when I elaborate on Lisa Zunshine’s work.
4 See Palmer (2004: 206–7), and Prince (1987: 10).
5 Interaction leading to intermentality in drama is mainly based on communication, since quite obviously, most of the interaction takes place in the speech acts of and between the characters. The whole dynamics of a play emerge when the characters interact and communicate. It is important to add here that communication does not just entail “what is said” in dialogues, monologues, soliloquies, and other speech forms of drama. The gaps and silences are also significant semantic communication tools in drama.
6 “Competitive action is intermental in the sense that the individuals are united in recognizing the need to engage in this action” (Palmer 2004: 223).
7 For further examples see Palmer (2004: 225).
8 Palmer describes these different types of groupings, though not in specific categories, in his Fictional Minds (2004: 228–30).
9 Most characterisation techniques are taken roughly from Pfister (1991b), chapter 5, subchapter 5.4.2: 1 83–239.
10 I am regarding speech and action as closely related and almost inseparable in drama. Hence what is meant here is that on the surface level the reader only sees the speech and the action of the characters and has to infer their thoughts from these two.
11 For a more elaborate discussion on popular subjects of late-Victorian drama see also Powell (1998) and Mazer (2004).
12 This play is