L’Inconnue d’Arras d’Armand Salacrou: du «drame-dans-la-vie» au «drame-de-la-vie»
"The Unknown Woman from Arras" by Armand Salacrou: from «drama-in-life» to «drama-of-life»

Author(s): Tomasz Kaczmarek
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, French Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Armand Salacrou; August Strindberg; drama crisis; expressionism; stage character
Summary/Abstract: The author of the article studies Salacrou’s play in the context of August Strindberg’s pre-expressionist aesthetic. In fact, this play, somewhat forgotten today, has a number of features which, like the works of the Swede, announce the crisis of traditional drama. Salacrou destroys the canonical form of «drama-in-life», which is based on a dramatic progression of the action and on the character as an active agent ensuring this same progression, by proposing a new paradigm of «drama-of-life» which moves away from classic prerogatives to focus on the inner life of the protagonist. Instead of focusing on episodes that inevitably lead to disaster, the French writer attempts to embrace «a lifetime» of the character who killed himself. This is how he passes from «agonistic drama» to «ontological drama».

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