Study Of Sartre's Dramatic Situations

As a philosopher, littérateur, dramatis, Sartre pondered the existential situation of human beings given the background of the WWII through his plays and left indelible footprints on the stages of 20th century. Sartre's dramas were called"Situational Play". Before Sartre no other playwriters'dramas had been attached such symbols. Starting from the playwriting technique, I chose Sartre as subject to reveal the particularity and universality of Sartre'construction of situation through comparison with other classic, realism and drama writer and techniques under the background of 19th and 20th century criticism dramas. The word Situation first appeared in the book of French torchbearer Didulos here were quite a lot creative figures studying drama situation such as Hegel, Brecht and etc. But if we start from Aristotle's Poetics, drama theory has a history of more than 2,000 years. The debut of drama situation theory was much earlier. And we have a lot more to dig from the subject. The writer of the thesis is to study the changes of the drama venation and how Sartre's play stood out with its integrative playwriting technique.From another perspective, Sartre as a philosopher, his plays were to a large extend regarded as a way to dramatize his philosophy theory, which can't be denied by us. But his plays were absolutely not the propaganda tool of his philosophy. Sartre's situation dramas generated force shocking the soul and heart of people on the basis of his existential philosophy theory and his playwriting technique is worth mulling.The writer divide the thesis into 5 chapter to fully analyze the way of expression and ideology meaning in Sartre's situation dramas. The writer reviewed the formation and important development stage of situational plays. Although Aristotle never mentioned the word situation in his Poetics, the situation appeared first in ancient Greek tragedies.During classicalism period, the theory of three unities was first mentioned, which was a playwriting technique on drama structure. But confined by space and time, play situation has become critical restrictions on plots and characters. During didacticism period, Didulo first brought forward that situation be used as the primary subject of a drama and characteristics the secondary. Hegel's conditional situation theory defined in detail situation. When it comes to the realism period during 19th and 20th century, lots of playwriters forged assortment of situations into dramas, which sparked quite a lot different schools. As one of the schools, Sartre's situational play integrated the general characteristics of realism dramas and created its unique features. Due to the influence of existential philosophy, situation was categorized in his《Being or not》into five categories: surroundings, others, location, the past and death. When creating dramas, Sartre centered around the five factors and integrated into his dramas his philosophic theory, which made Sartre's situation drama much outstanding during the second half of 20th century.The writer of the thesis analyzes the material selecting feature of Sartre's play."Surroundings"and"others"covered the primary spectrum of material selection."Surroundings"includes in itself time background and social environment, which can't be viewed separately from Sartre's"interference"policy. Thanks to interference, drama performance, as a collective phenomenon, can serve as a way to reflect the present situation of the society. The author of the thesis compared Sartre's play together with ancient Greek drama and criticism drama of the 19th century and got the periodic meaning of situation on material selection. The thesis categorized"others"into 3 categories: the strange others, the others in love and the others with consanguinity. Through the interrelationship of these 3 categories, we found that we can't view simply the equalization of"the others"with"hell"as the cause of mutual harm among people.In chapter 3 , the author analyzed the character design of Sartre's play."Location"and"the past"can be used to summarize the way characters in the play to annotate their roles. The"location"determined that the people are people of the society. People belong to the society due to the scarcity of material and gregariousness of human beings. People were situated in the situation which posed restriction on them. The dramas show the selection of people under such situations. Meanwhile, people are separated, so dilemma force the people into separation and generated different direction of selection."The past"is much more abstract when compared with location. It is the historical background which makes the activities of people meaningful. It pushes forward people; desalt the characteristics of people so to make the value of will stand out. During the chapter, the author compared the character design with Brecht's narrative drama to exhibit the way of expression of"sense of distance"and"nihility"in situation.Chapter 4, the author explores the limit and"death"of Sartre's play."Death"is not simple perdition of the bodies. It is a complementary philosophy concept with"freedom". The author divided death into 3 status:"the perdition of the bodies and the freedom of the spirits";"the death of the spirits and the freedom of the bodies";"the death of both the bodies and the spirits". Sartre's plays incorporated limit to express the 3 different status. He always put people in limits to see the common status of people's struggle.In chapter 5 the author analyze Sartre's unique technique in establishing situations. The author analyze the issue from 3 different perspectives, that is the"chanciness of situations","absurdity of situations"and the"closure of situations". To Sartre, everything in the world is random so the situation is a collection to exhibit the randomness. Meanwhile existentialism had critical impact on absurd theatre during 50s and 60s. In Sartre's play, he exhibited the general existence of absurdity, which is worth studying when playwriting technique is concerned. Closure is a technique relevant to the aforementioned issues, which was manifested in the structure of Sartre's play and relected the deep internal meaning, which is the common features of his plays.The thesis tried to answer the following questions such as the meaning of Sartre's situation to present playwriting; from what new perspectives shall we analyze his value.