The “Unmanning” Word: Language, Masculinity and Political Correctness in the Work of David Mamet and Philip Roth
The “Unmanning” Word: Language, Masculinity and Political Correctness in the Work of David Mamet and Philip Roth
The most obvious parallel between the work of the American writers Philip Roth and David Mamet seems to be the amount of controversy that their texts have attracted over the years. Both have been accused of obscenity, for instance, and, more seriously, of misogyny. Roth has been labeled one of the “bad boys of contemporary American letters” Jones and Nance 160 , an author who “projects ... enormous rage and disappointment with womankind” in his work Allen 96 . Mamet, meanwhile, has been termed “the playwright of oaths and testosterone” “David Mamet on Trial at the Court of Feminism” . As these references to “letters,” “oaths,” “boys” and “testosterone” suggest, both writers share an interest in the relationship between language and masculinity. This is what I aim to address in this article. I wish to demonstrate the similarities between Roth and Mamet’s treatment of this relationship, both in their early writing and in their more recent material. I focus on two works by each author, an early piece and a later piece: Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint 1969 and Deception 1990 , and Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago 1974 and Oleanna 1992 .
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- Allen, Mary. “When She Was Good She Was Horrid.” The Necessary Blankness: Women in Major Fiction of the Sixties. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976.
- Bechtel, Roger. “P.C. Power Play: Language and Representation in David Mamet’s Oleanna.” Theatre Studies (Columbus, Ohio), 41 (1996): 29-48.
- Berridge, Elizabeth. “Recent Fiction.” Daily Telegraph, 17 April 1969.
- Buchan, Irving. “Portnoy’s Complaint, or the Rooster’s Kvetch.” Studies in the Twentieth Century 6 (1970): 97-107.
- “David Mamet on Trial at the Court of Feminism.” Independent 3 July 1993.
- Dean, Anne. David Mamet: Language as Dramatic Action. London: Associated University Presses, 1990.
- Forrey, Robert. “Oedipal Politics in Portnoy’s Complaint.” Critical Essays on Philip Roth. Ed. Sanford Pinsker. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982.
- Jones, Judith Paterson and Guinevera Nance. Philip Roth. New York: Ungar, 1981.
- Jones, Nesta and Steven Dykes, eds. File On Mamet. London: Methuen, 1991.
- Macleod, Christine. “The Politics of Gender, Language and Hierarchy in Mamet’s Oleanna.” Journal of American Studies 29 (1995): 199-214.
- Mamet, David. Sexual Perversity in Chicago and The Duck Variations: Two Plays. 1974. New York: French, 1977.
- Mamet, David. Oleanna. 1992. New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1993.
- Mannes, Marya. “A Dissent from Marya Mannes.” Saturday Review 22 February 1969: 39.
- Michel, Pierre. “Portnoy’s Complaint and Philip Roth’s Complexities.” Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo American Letters 4 (1974): 1-10.
- Norris, Hoke. “Is Philip Roth Anti-Semitic?” Chicago Times Bookweek 26 May 1968: 2.
- Piette, Alain. “The Devil’s Advocate: David Mamet’s Oleanna and Political Correctness.” Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama. Ed. Marc Maufort. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.
- Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. 1969. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.
- Roth, Philip. Deception. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991.
- Skeele, David. “The Devil and David Mamet.” Modern Drama (Canada) 36 (1993): 512-518.
- Stout, Janis. “The Misogyny of Roth’s The Great American Novel.” Ball State University Forum 27. 1 (1986): 72-75.
- ISSN: 1300-6606
- Başlangıç: 1995
- Yayıncı: -
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