Mustafa Bal

Peter Shaffer's Equus (1973) is a distinctive play in its representation of complex psychological/psychiatric issues on the theatre stage. As such, the play is one of the most notable theatrical works of psychological realism in English theatre. Peter Shaffer achieves this especially through his characterization of the mentally unstable Alan Strang. Since his childhood, Alan has developed an extraordinary attachment to and obsession with horses, and this eventually results in his blinding six horses and his entrustment to the treatment of the psychiatrist Martin Dysart. Accordingly, Equus has been, so far, studied through various-mainly psychological and psychiatric perspectives. In this sense, the aim of this article is to shed a new light and contribute to these studies by examining the close relations between Peter Shaffer's Equus and equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP) - an acknowledged method of psychiatric treatment by means of horses that psychiatrist Dysart of the play neglects (or is unaware of) while planning his therapies for Alan, who, due to his intimacy with horses, also as a stable-boy, might benefit from the methods of equine-assisted psychotherapy. For this purpose, this article analyses and reveals the ties between the play and equine-assisted psychotherapy mainly through related studies on the therapy, Shaffer's characterization of Alan, and relevant incidents in the play.

As a much-discussed part of the human mind, memory today is an interdisciplinary subject studied by a variety of academic fields such as psychology, sociology, psychiatry, cultural studies, and literature. In British drama, it finds a reflection with the term "memory plays" whose representative playwright in the twentieth century is Harold Pinter. On the other hand, it can be observed that Anthony Neilson, emerging as a voice of the British In-Yer-Face drama of the 1990s, makes an emphatic use of memory in his plays like his predecessor. In this sense, this paper argues that Anthony Neilson's playwriting shows resemblances to Harold Pinter's, which is acknowledged as the Pinteresque, that, more specifically, Pinter's Old Times (1971) and Neilson's Penetrator (1993) share much in their use of memory, and analyses the particularities each playwright employs in their utilisation of this concept within their plays.

Caryl Churchill's plays thematically embody elements of many-isms such as feminism, sexism, capitalism, and socialism, labeling her dramaturgy as an eclectic combination of social philosophies and political ideologies. Although genuinely creative and original in her writing and theatrical practices, Caryl Churchill does not refrain from making use of preceding European theatrical theory, practice, and culture. In this sense, she is a playwright who benefits considerably from the thematic and technical aspects of the Brechtian epic theatre, which can be observed in her Mad Forest. Sarah Kane, on the other hand, with her experimental dramaturgy that stretches and twists features of realism and naturalism into new post-dramatic forms, is no less different from her predecessor Caryl Churchill in terms of embracing challenging, confrontational ideas and reflecting them in her plays. Notwithstanding with her openness to novel dramatic styles, Sarah Kane, too, acknowledges earlier dramatic aesthetics as seen in her Phaedra's Love, which is an adaptation of the classical Roman playwright Seneca's Phaedra. Likewise, it can be observed that Sarah Kane utilizes certain features of the Brechtian epic theater in her Cleansed. Considering these, this article studies how and to what extent Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane maintain the Brechtian dramatic elements in their Mad Forest and Cleansed, respectively. By examining this tripartite interaction among Bertolt Brecht, Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane, the study also tries to reinterpret the dramatic relations among these seemingly distant playwrights of different generations.

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an account of the author’s firsthand experiences between 2006 and 2010, relating to his involvement in the establishment of the English Language and Literature department at the International University of Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and of the difficulties and challenges of the venture in the post-war country, whose higher education system needed urgent reforms. The focus of the study is on
the cultural diversity found in an English language (a unifying global language) education setting established in a country which, despite the present estrangement, once hosted a common culture for the Bosnian and Turkish students of the department. Clustered mainly around this issue, the paper further elaborates on the transcultural dynamics of English education aimed at a variety of students that came from different educational backgrounds.

This book chapter (culled from the author’s PhD dissertation, entitled “The End: The Apocalyptic in In-Yer-Face Drama,” Middle East Technical University, 2009) studies apocalypticism found in Mark Ravenhill's play Faust is Dead through a comprehensive and close analysis of the play.

Abstract
This chapter studies the relations between the experiential theater of Sarah Kane and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s postdramatic theater theory. Postdramatic theater is a new interpretation of the artful representation of the human-being through a set of novel aesthetics that get rid of the traditional dramatic concepts such as authoritative dramatic text, mimesis, representation, and linear and regular flow of events. In this sense, this study examines how and to what extent some significant characteristics of Kane’s plays, especially their breaking away from the text and traditional plot construction, and the apocalyptic discourse are conducive in revealing the postdramatic in Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. (Although the original study is in Turkish, I have its English translation as well. If you are interested in reading the chapter in English please contact me.)

Through the end of the eighteenth century, England was experiencing changes. It had already evolved economically due to the Industrial Revolution which caused the emergence of a working class. Added to these important economic and social changes, the political transformation in France due to the French Revolution influenced England as well. Thus, in the political arena, together with France and several other European countries, England, too, was dealing with the pangs caused by the Revolution. Romanticism came out as a result of all these social, political and economic changes; and since the period was revolutionary in nature, so was the new trend in literature. Meanwhile, in the field of philosophy, the new period was dominated by German Idealism against the rationalism, empiricism and materialism of the previous age. Hence, although its intellectual background was prepared in Germany, Romanticism flourished in England in literature.

The initiators and the theoreticians of Romanticism in English literature were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge, being a poet and a philosopher at the same time, merged his ideas with those of the philosophers of German Idealism and established the major poetic concepts of English Romanticism which he later, in 1817, put forward in his theoretical, philosophical and critical work Biographia Literaria.

The purpose of this study is to analyse Coleridge's major poetic concepts as put forth in Biographia Literaria; that is, the concepts of imagination; the merging of subject and object, mind and nature, poet and poem; and the reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities, and to reveal how and to what extent the poet applied these concepts in his poetry. For this purpose, Coleridge's poems "The Eolian Harp" (1796), "Kubla Khan" (1797), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and "Dejection: An Ode" (1802) have been selected.

In the thesis, in the introductory chapter, a brief historical, philosophical and literary background together with information on Biographia Literaria are given. In the first, second, and third chapters, respectively, Coleridge's concepts of imagination; the merging of subject and object, mind and nature, and poet and poem; and the reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities are explained with references to Biographia Literaria and then exemplified in the four poems mentioned above.

The poems which will be used to illustrate Coleridge's poetic concepts can be briefly introduced as follows: "The Eolian Harp" is an example of a conversation poem addressed to Coleridge's wife; it is written in blank-verse, and it describes a landscape and Coleridge's meditations in that landscape. "Kubla Khan" is a poem written in an opium reverie; therefore, it is highly symbolic, obscure and cryptic in content and also irregular in form. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a mystery poem about supernatural characters and events; it is written in the ballad form and in archaic medieval language, and it also includes a prose Marginal Gloss written in seventeenth century English. "Dejection: An Ode" is a highly personal and confessional poem in the ode form; it was originally written as a letter.

With this study, it can be concluded that all of these poems mirror Coleridge's three significant poetic concepts put forth in Biographia Literaria, thus paving the way for the conclusion that Coleridge's poetics in theory and his poems in practice are in accordance.

This PhD dissertation presents a close analysis of one of the ageless discourses of human life – apocalypse, or the End – within the highly controversial In-Yer-Face drama of the 1990s British stage. The study particularly argues that there is a strong apocalyptic sense in the plays of the decade, and it discovers that the apocalyptic representation within these plays varies. Five plays by three prominent playwrights of the decade are used to illustrate and expand the focus. After a detailed examination of the apocalyptic discourse, it is claimed that Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing and Faust is Dead are based on certain philosophical ideas of the End, Anthony Neilson’s Normal and Penetrator reveal the apocalyptic through an extreme use of violence, and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis comingles representations of the apocalyptic and psychological trauma.