Mythmaking in progress: Plays by women on female writers and literary characters ·

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This thesis analyzes the process of women’s mythmaking in the plays written by
female playwrights. Through writing the lives of female writers and rewriting the literary
characters, which have been created by male writers, the women playwrights assume the role
of a mythmaker. A mythmaker possesses the power to use the ‘word,’ thereby possesses the
power to control ‘reality.’ However, for centuries, women have been debarred from
generating their own myths, naming their own experiences, and controlling their own
‘realities.’ Male mythmakers prescribed the roles women were required to perform within the
society.

Feminist archetypal theorists believe that through a close study of related patterns in
women’s writing, common grounds, and experiences, the archetypes shared by women will be
disclosed. Unveiling these archetypes will eventually lead to the establishment of new myths
around these archetypes. As myths are regarded as the source of collective experiences,
analyzing how women have rewritten, revised, devised, and originated myths would thus
permit women to reclaim the power to name, and hence to influence the so-called reality
established by the patriarchy.
Hence, this study analyzes the constantly developing process of women’s
mythmaking/mythbreaking in Liz Lochhead’s Blood and Ice, Rose Leiman Goldemberg’s
Letters Home, Bilgesu Erenus’ Halide, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the
Nightingale, Bryony Lavery’s Ophelia, and Zeynep Avcı’s Gilgamesh. These playwrights try
to depose the stereotypical images attributed to women by male mythmakers

Pürnur Uçar Özbirinci
Mythmaking in progress: Plays by women on female writers and literary characters · 2007 · 257 sayfa.
Danışman: Prof.Dr. Meral Çileli ; Prof.Dr. Nursel İçöz

BU araştırmanın devamına: http://tez2.yok.gov.tr/tez.htm adresinden ulaşabilirsiniz.