الفهرس 
The Greatest Influence on the NewOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This thesis attempts an application of the theories of Michel Foucault (1945-1984), the most significant influence on the new historicist theory and practice, to five plays by the contemporary African-American dramatist August Wilson (1945-2005): Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), Fences (1986), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1988), The Piano Lesson (1990), and Two Trains Running (1992). The thesis provides a demonstration of New Historicism, as the literary critical approach adopted, as well as a detailed account of Michel Foucault’s theory of power. It also explores power conflicts on the grounds of both race and gender and investigates the dynamics of power in the black community. The study concludes that the dominant group maintains and reinforces its power via a number of discursive practices such as money, violence, ownership, and the manipulation of the religions discourse, the judicial discourse, and the psychiatric discourse. It also exploits the institutions of marriage and the family and various power strategies as ’self-policing’.