The Main Components of Postmodernism in Contemporary American Drama; A Postmodernist Reading of Sam Shepard's Plays

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Moslem Aeini, Seyed Mostafa Mokhtabad-Amrei

Abstract

Postmodernism and its main components have been reflected in contemporary American drama by affecting both the form and content. American playwright Sam Shepard has usually drafted plays on the family and the collapse of its governing system, somewhat reflecting the prevailing state of humanity in the postmodern era. The main problem in this study is finding out the quantitative and qualitative impacts of components of postmodernism on Shepard's plays. The study also aims to describe the link between cultural syncretism, paradox, uncertainty, intertextuality, return to the past, irony, fading the storyline, delusion and fiction, the foundation of social breakdown, critical discourse, demythologization, mashinism, consumption dominance, play with words, pluralism, transcendenceism, and postmodernism-caused historicism with Shepard's plays, and find out how they affect the components of Shepard's plays. This study evaluates the above impacts within both form and content and determines the state of each of them in Shepard's plays.

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