반비극과 부정비극으로서의 아서 밀러의 『부활 블루스』

Abstract

This essay articulates the genre of Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues(2002) and examines the playwright’s later view on tragedy in the modern world. Miller argues in “Tragedy and the Common Man” (1949) that a hero’s indomitable will to secure “his sense of personal dignity” makes the genre ultimately optimistic. However, since 1960s, Miller has written more comedies and absurdist plays overturning his earlier optimistic view regarding tragedy. His lack of concern regarding tragedy has been interpreted as his increasing doubt about optimism in the postmodern era wherein tragic events have continued and expanded limitlessly. In this regard, Resurrection Blues seems to configure the playwright’s cynicism or even pessimism in the form of black comedy. “Blues” in the title, however, with its generic characteristics fusing contrasting elements indicates the complicated aspect of the play’s genre as both a tragedy and comedy. Despite the anti-tragic narrative of the play, its theatrical effect emphasizes an invisible character on stage whose existence is articulated only through silence and light and this physical and existential otherness of the character negatively represents a scapegoat, an essence of tragedy. Thus, while the anti-tragic narrative makes the play a comedy, its theatricality demonstrates it as a negative tragedy, which both proves and disproves the prevalent pessimism on the genre of tragedy in the postmodern world.