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AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume3, Number2. May 2019                                    Pp.37-48

Tragedy and social drama in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Tahar Bayouli

Majmaah University, Azzulfi College of Education
Department of English, Saudi Arabia

Majmaah University, Azzulfi College of Education
Department of English, Saudi Arabia

Abstract:

Abstract PDF

This paper examines the issue of genre classification in Death of a Salesman by focusing on the dialectic relation at the heart of the play’s structure between tragedy and social drama. It argues that the tragic resolution brought to the theme of social protest and the characterization of the protagonist is what gives the play its unique place as the quintessential modern tragedy. It is concluded that tragedy and the social theme are not mutually destructive in Death of a Salesman as some critics stated. Rather, they are combined to make an intense dramatic treatment of the modern American individual’s most pressing issues. Without being constrained by prescriptive standardized rules, Miller produced a dramatic form that rightly claims the status of what can be labeled a modern tragedy, appealing to modern audiences as rarely any other modern play did.

Cite as:

Bayouli, T., & Sammali, I. (2019). Tragedy and social drama in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies, 3 (2) 37-48.

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Tahar Bayouli is an assistant lecturer of English language and literature at the Department of
English, Azzulfi College of Education, Majmaah University, KSA. He obtained his PhD from the University of Paris West France in 1994. Thesis “The Image of the Orient in Elizabethan Drama”.
His research interests include drama, semiotics and orientalism.

Imed Samaali is currently a lecturer of English language and Applied Linguistics at the
Department of English, Azzulfi College of Education, Majmaah University, KSA. He obtained his
Master’s Degree from the Faculty of letters, Arts and Humanities Manouba, Tunisia in 2011. He
taught from 2011 to 2014 at the Higher School of Economic and Social Sciences of Tunis, Tunisia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6173-8840