Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Turner, Darwin T.

Titel

The Servant in the Comedies of William Congreve

Ist Teil von

• CLA journal, 2014-03, Vol.57 (3), p.159-164

Ort / Verlag

Baltimore: College Language Association

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Here, Turner focuses on the significance of the servant in the comedies of 17th century English playwright, William Congreve. He examines Congreve's comedy for its application of wit and conceit--not however, as people see these employed in the more revered or main characters. He, instead, looks at how Congreve graces his minor, unimportant, servant characters with intellectual and calculating gifts that are typically reserved for the elite or master class. The importance of this, according to him, is that in Congreve's comedies "the servant does not remain of one type," and although people will find the conventional dull and subservient types, they also find the type who play roles such as "confidant to his master or mistress, of arch-deceiver of the antagonists of his employer, or of a wit worthy of existing in the society of the elegant." While he does not focus on race, his alternative reading of "otherness" in this case, an outsidership that is determined by class and labor, represents a critical framework that becomes central to exploding the traditional conventions of reading so-called "aracial" texts.