Poetics of Magical Realism in Sarah Ruhl’s сomedy “The Clean House”

Abstract

The article examines the features of magical realism as a direction of literature, as well as some of the characteristic features of American drama. The history of performances of the play “The Clean House” by the American playwright Sarah Ruhl is presented in the paper, and also a brief overview of critical articles about these theatrical performances is offered. The study proves that the play "The Clean House" can be viewed in the context of magical realism, based on a number of characteristic features, such as metaphysics, conventionality, rejection of psychological explanations of the characters’ actions, the presence of two realities, distortion of space and time, existential problems. It is noted that these features are manifested at the level of compositional construction, speech organization of the play, chronotope, content. It is shown that a metaphysically closed space is materially open, and time in the play is leveled, stopped and determined by the subjective experiences of the characters. Laughter is nominated as the key concept of the play, linking the spatio-temporal organization of the text with its ontological content since through laughter the idea of the immortality of the heroes’ love, which acquires a sacred meaning is affirmed in the play. It is emphasized that the poetics of the “magical” makes it possible to realize the ontological or existential meaning of the play, to show the coexistence of the miraculous and the ordinary.