The Bakhtinian Grotesque Realism in John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy’s The Happy Haven
Tarih: Date
In the 12th International IDEA Conference, held in Akdeniz University in April 2018, Res. Assist. Melike İrem Şimşek represented our university by attending the conference as a speaker with her presentation titled "The Bakhtinian Grotesque Realism in John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy’s The Happy Haven."
Abstract
"John Arden (1930-2012) and Margaretta D'Arcy (1934-) use Bakhtinian grotesque realism in their play The Happy Haven (1962) to satirise the power relations and conventional values of the society. The play is set in a nursing home for the elderly, where they investigate the power struggle between the power-hungry Doctor Copperthwaite and the old people who rebel against him in a qrotesque-farcical scene. As for the basis of the qrotesque, Bakhtin argues that it is the degradation of the idealised, elevated, official and sacred. In similar vein, Arden and D’Arcy degrade and subvert the common stereotype of nice old people by portraying them as selfish, nasty and irrational human beings, thus they provide them a new identity, a re-birth, which is one of the concepts of grotesque tradition. Moreover, they make use of flat characterisation and use commedia de'l arte masks in the play, which points out the Bakhtinian idea that a grotesque body is universal, not individualistic. Apart from these, the other characteristics of the grotesque realism that can be observed in the play are the use of parody, irony, laughter, exaggeration of human nature which leads to caricaturisation, tragicomic elements and the subversion of the authority. Accordingly, this article aims to discuss the elements of the Bakhtinian grotesque tradition which appear in The Happy Haven, in analogy with the satirical and political background of the play."