الفهرس 
Chapter OneOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 275 |  |  |
| | | from | 275 | | |
Abstract
The theatrical phenomenon, known as documentary drama, deals with Iraqi War and generates many plays such as Guantanamo : Honour Bound to Defend Freedom by Gillian Slovo and Victoria Britain, Stuff Happens and The Vertical Hour by David Hare, Mottortown by Simon Stephens, among other works. Such plays include both real and figurative characters. The experience of war, as represented in such literary works, is history meant to document historical events and lend such works real immediacy. The works examined are documentary, representing the same point in history as much as they are seen as mediation between history and literature. Thus, the intention is to attempt to read the in-between realities as they are represented figuratively paralleling them with the known factual realities as they are in the political speeches, articles of professional analysts, critics and even ordinary people. The main assumptions of new historicism are much related to documentary drama. Therefore, evaluating drama through the hermeneutic concepts of new historicism would be helpful to trace the social and political atmosphere. Some of the concepts offered by new historicists may be fruitfully adapted to the reading of the texts examined in this study. New historicism can be defined as a mixture of a literary foreground and a historical background. It is a reading of the text in the light of power, ideology, and social forces. Accordingly, this study tends to emphasize the historicity of the three selected plays and relate them to the ideology of their time. This point also emerges from the new historicist premise that considers the best frame for interpreting literature is to place it in its historical context. Here, a discussion of the issues of the time as reflected in the examined works is regarded.