Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness

Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness

Bags onstage are a meaningful presence: being empty shells at times or full-fledged containing devices at others, they may work as the characters’ itinerant root of identity or, on the contrary, symbolise the remains of a memory wasteland. Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1899), Pinter’s The...

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Veröffentlicht in:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc,
1. Verfasser: Guedj, Emmanuelle
Format: Article ou chapitre numérique
Sprache:Anglais
Veröffentlicht: Études britanniques contemporaines 2019
Online Zugang:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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spelling openedition-oai:revues.org:ebc_5941 https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.5941 urn:doi:10.4000/ebc.5941 en https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5941 2019-04-05T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/fe8g https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness Études britanniques contemporaines Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2271-5444 info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1168-4917 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc Guedj, Emmanuelle Bags onstage are a meaningful presence: being empty shells at times or full-fledged containing devices at others, they may work as the characters’ itinerant root of identity or, on the contrary, symbolise the remains of a memory wasteland. Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1899), Pinter’s The Caretaker (1960), and McGuinness’ Baglady (1988), explore the intricate ties between wandering, identity and memory. Although the plays are set in different territories, times, and contexts, they concur on the roles bags play to question memory and identity. Wandering is either what a character’s identity is paradoxically grounded on, or the process at work in the slow but ineluctable loss of it. Bag-characters are then split between their bodily presence and the physical incarnation of their minds / bags onstage. This paper aims to show how bags help question memory and identity and participate in the reification of characters. Que ce soit dans The Importance of Being Earnest d’Oscar Wilde (1899), dans The Caretaker d’Harold Pinter (1960), ou encore dans Baglady de Franck McGuinness (1988), les sacs et valises permettent de dire l’errance des personnages. Oscillant entre le plein et le creux, entre la fonction de racine mobile identitaire et une symbolique de vestige mémoriel stérile, l’objet n’est pas un simple accessoire. Les trois pièces, de nationalités, périodes et contextes différents, s’accordent toutefois pour mettre au jour les ramifications complexes entre errance, mémoire et identité. Le sac devient le signe scénique de l’errance du personnage que celle-ci soit constitutive d’une identité ou au contraire le signe de son effacement progressif mais inéluctable; véritable matérialisation sur scène de la mémoire, il indique également sa perte, devenant un contenant sans contenu. Symbole du bag character, cet être clochardisé errant dans les zones urbaines, le sac permet également de dire ce que le personnage semble ne plus pouvoir dire.
collection OpenEdition Journal
language Anglais
format Article ou chapitre numérique
building 0/Bibliothèque numérique/
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description Bags onstage are a meaningful presence: being empty shells at times or full-fledged containing devices at others, they may work as the characters’ itinerant root of identity or, on the contrary, symbolise the remains of a memory wasteland. Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1899), Pinter’s The Caretaker (1960), and McGuinness’ Baglady (1988), explore the intricate ties between wandering, identity and memory. Although the plays are set in different territories, times, and contexts, they concur on the roles bags play to question memory and identity. Wandering is either what a character’s identity is paradoxically grounded on, or the process at work in the slow but ineluctable loss of it. Bag-characters are then split between their bodily presence and the physical incarnation of their minds / bags onstage. This paper aims to show how bags help question memory and identity and participate in the reification of characters.
author Guedj, Emmanuelle
spellingShingle Guedj, Emmanuelle
Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
author_facet Guedj, Emmanuelle
author_sort Guedj, Emmanuelle
title Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
title_short Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
title_full Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
title_fullStr Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
title_full_unstemmed Wandering Identities: of Bags and Plays by Wilde, Pinter, and McGuinness
title_sort wandering identities: of bags and plays by wilde, pinter, and mcguinness
publisher Études britanniques contemporaines
publishDate 2019
container_title URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.5941
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/5941
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