Linguistic modality and hamartia in Bond's Lear and Osborne's Look Back in Anger

The thesis aims to uncover the complex relationship between hamartia, an invaluable component of tragedy, and modality, a central concept in human communication and expression. The study also tries to provide diverse examples from two contemporary plays that have different settings and themes, namely John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), a prominent representative of the kitchen sink drama, and Edward Bond's Lear (1971), a significant representative of rational theatre. The plays have been chosen for their protagonists Jimmy Porter and Lear, who manifest hubristic behaviour in their interactions. The analyses are based on Stinton's (1975) interpretation of hamartia and Simpson's (1993) interpretation of modality. The extracts have been proportionally selected from both plays to achieve consistency. The study has demonstrated that hubristic characters tend to manifest their behaviour primarily with epistemic and boulomaic modalities in both plays as the protagonists mostly utilise the two. It has also been demonstrated that the characters use other types of modalities, but the use of other modalities have been ignored as they do not fall into the scope of this study. Accordingly, it has been exhibited that Jimmy Porter manifests his excessive masculinity with epistemic and boulomaic modalities in realistic domestic settings and Lear mirrors his hubristic authority with epistemic and boulomaic modalities in various fictional public settings. Therefore, both protagonists' modal use reflect their hamartia regardless of the setting.