Undoing Scotland after devolution in Liz Lochhead's dramatic adaptations of classical texts on page and stage

Abstract

The thesis studies the female voice in the local culture in the post-devolution dramatic adaptations of the Scottish Makar Liz Lochhead. It acknowledges the dramatist's idiosyncratic approach of fusing poetry and drama in order to question the new internationalist national model in Scotland resembling the main features of anti-colonial nationalisms post 1990s. Central to the thesis is the question of local female voice in the current national debate and whether and to what extent it problematizes the relation between feminism and nationalism in the new civic model introduced after devolution as an internationalist in Scotland. Lochhead's idiosyncratic voice of a poet and dramatist is interpreted as a non-feminist and non-nationalist with a specific focus on individualised female dramatic representations. The complex semiotic interpretation of the constructed dramatic images by the playwright in her post-devolutionary adaptations of the classics shows a problematic reading of gender difference as cultural identity which appears with distorted features in the political revisions laden with self-satire. She applies metonymic use of female characterisation in order to reflect upon the changes in the cultural, political and linguistic climate, which results in a shift from a post-colonial dramatic discourse to a socio-linguistic one in the understanding of Robin Lakoff about a highly politicised and performative language and identity. The female voice in the local culture is frequently silenced and partially invisible, thus excluded from the political/national debate. However, Lochhead's subject often re-asserts itself through silent resistance and body visibility to refer to the instability of male political voices and sometimes to ironize their lack of individual identity.