Writing the Nation in the Plays of Yeats, Shawqi, and Claudel: A Comparative Study

Abstract

William Butler Yeats (1865 -1939), Ahmad Shawqi (1868-1932) and Paul Claudel (1868- 1955) were renowned and greatest poets in their respective countries in the twentieth century, yet the three poets had an increasing interest in drama which forced them to playwriting for the purpose of writing their nations. The three writers had appeared in the early twentieth century at the time of the First World War and its repercussions on the world. The aim of the thesis is to explore the similarities and differences in the plays of the three dramatists as each one of them showed a great zeal in defending his country and in revealing a great sense of patriotism in his plays. Themes and techniques of relevant plays are to be explored and analyzed. Roger Allen defined drama in his book An Introduction to Arabic Literature as “Above all, the very fact that drama is the most public of all literary genres, a performance, an act of impersonation and showing in front of an audience, has also made it in many, if not most, cultures and historical periods the focus of political oversight – in a word, censorship” (194).