Abstract
In this treatment of Bernard Shaw as a postmodern writer, author offers a fresh interpretation of Pygmalion, one of Shaw's most enduring plays. Challenging widely held assumptions about Shaw, she maintains that he critiqued conventional notions about language and psychology long before such iconoclasts as Jacques Derrida and James Hillman came on scene. Reynolds calls Pygmalion the Shavian creation myth and compares Henry Higgins's struggle to transform a bedraggled flower girl into a duchess to Shaw's reinvention of himself as larger-than-life G.B.S. who entertained and edified an immense readership. Reynolds argues that long before Derrida, Karl Marx's ideas about language were a powerful influence on Shaw. In Pygmalion, Shaw topples binary oppositions, as Derrida calls them, that characterize Western thought: essence versus appearance, speech versus writing, authenticity versus performance. Pygmalion's Wordplay seeks to reveal an unexpected side of Shaw - his acute insight into linguistic and psychological concepts that dominate postmodern thought - that will be provocative to Shavians and Derrideans alike.
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