Hauntology and Intertextuality in Contemporary British Drama by Women Playwrights

Hauntology and Intertextuality in Contemporary British Drama by Women Playwrights is dedicated to the study of intertextual aspects of contemporary British drama authored by women, the aspects defined by the cultural significance attached to the figure of the ghost. The main level on which the spectral figure is investigated is its deconstructive potential for rupture and openness, offering the space in which conceptual and textual Others can emerge. The ghost comes to signify the processes of being haunted by the past, by other texts, and by those who have been marginalised or silenced. The spectral figure operates as a site of intertextual transposition and transference of memory, trauma, melancholia or loss, binding contemporary drama by women to another time and other texts, breaching its self-sufficiency and destabilising the notions of independent and coherent selves. From the perspective of hauntology, these intertextual processes are perceived as complex and disturbing, provoking a crisis in representation, temporality, or composition. The spectre functions as a figure of this crisis. 

Introduction / 7

Chapter 1. Hauntology, intertextuality, revision / 21
Hauntology / 21
Hauntology and intertextuality / 40
Hauntology, intertextuality, rewriting / 51
Intertextuality, revision and haunting in drama by women / 62

Chapter 2. Hauntology, anachrony and postmodern identities: Deborah Levy’s Macbeth, False memories / 75
The ghosts / 79
Time, anachrony and the future / 83
Acting, camouflage and usurpation / 89
Acting and murder; imitation and transformation / 94
Murders and burials / 105
Phantom structures / 110
The mobile phone / 111
The film / 118
Conclusion / 119

Chapter 3. Spectrality, monstrosity and the other: Liz Lochhead’s Blood and Ice / 121
The tableau – the nightmare structure / 123
The creature/ the spectre / 127
The spectral space / 129
Spectral specularity / 131
The creature, the double, the mirror / 136
Ghost writing – haunting and creativity / 149
Monstrosity/ motherhood, creation/ procreation / 159
Conclusion / 167

Chapter 4. Hauntology and melancholia / 171
Mourning and melancholia: Pushing the Prince into Denmark by Deborah Levy / 172
Shakespeare’s Hamlet – Ophelia and the pre-text / 175
The ghostly figures / 184
Melancholia / 190
Mourning / 197
Melancholia and otherness: The Ash Girl by Timberlake Wertenbaker / 201
Spectrality / 202
Intertextuality and revision / 203
Otherness and exile / 210
Sadness and melancholia / 214
The haunted forest / 218
The other otherness – gender and feminist revision / 223
Conclusion / 231

Chapter 5. Hauntology and non-heterosexual dramaturgy / 233
Hauntology, death and otherness: Two Marias by Bryony Lavery / 234
The ghost / 238
The corpse / 244
Mourning / 250
Working through and enacting trauma / 257
Lesbian drama / 272
The spectral and the gothic: Her Aching Heart by Bryony Lavery / 275
The phantom – the gothic romance / 277
Metacritical intertextuality / 284
Costuming and mutable selves / 287
Towards the lesbian dramaturgy / 292
Conclusion / 299

Conclusion / 301
Works cited / 313
Streszczenie / 331
Index / 333

Edyta Lorek-Jezińska