Fooling With the Facts: Revisiting Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour

• 발행기관: 한국영미어문학회
• 저자명: Heebon Park
• 간행물 정보: 『영미어문학』영미어문학 제129호, 241~262쪽, 전체 22쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2018.06.30

국문 초록

This paper reexamines Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play, The Children’s Hour , arguing that the issues it foregrounds, including good/evil, mercy/justice, mistreatment/revenge and lesbianism, can be subsumed by one at the heart of Hellman’s life - her controversial relationship with truth and reality. The study traces ‘the lie’ in The Children’s Hour , showing not only that this focus complements the other issues, but also that it illustrates the playwright’s creative attitude to truth - one that is highly relevant in the current ‘post-truth’ era. This analysis also discusses the appropriation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice , embedded in The Children’s Hour through the paralleling and layering of the central relationship of Shakespeare’s play. This provides a canonical counterweight to the emotionalism and sentimentality commonly associated with melodrama and offers a stage for the clashing of different webs of belief. These two focuses highlight the playwright’s moral focus and her tendency to merge truth and fantasy on and off the stage.

목차

1. Introduction: A Slippery Truth

2. Shakespearean Mercy

3. Secrets and Lies

5. Conclusion: Nothing But the Truth

키워드

Lillian Hellman The Children’s Hour truth lesbianism The Merchant of Venice appropriation