Grotesque realism in Dambudzo Marechera's drama*. Issue 1 (2nd January 2016) - Seda, Owen
Abstract : The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera has been hailed for the modernist influences in his works. Marechera's literary outputs have also continued to fascinate contemporary readers because of the writer's overtly autobiographical writing style that was based on his outrageous lifestyle.While this article acknowledges the frequent observation that Marechera's work displays consistency of style, focus and purpose across his chosen literary genres (namely the novel, the poem, the short story and drama), I focus on the least studied genre in Marechera's literary output, his drama. I will argue that as an embodied art form that is meant for performance rather than private reading as literature, drama allows Marechera to perform the body as a significant site for elements of grotesque realism in his works. Using selected plays by Dambudzo Marechera as illustrations, the article will analyse the extent to which Marechera's plays present the body in performance as a site of post-independence social criticism where, as Mikhail Bakhtin and others critics observe, the material bodily principle with its predilection for consumption, food, drink, merry-making, death, excrement and sexual reproduction is exposed.