Hegemony and corruption in Howard Brenton's the Genius and Jude

The aim of this thesis is to scrutinize The Genius (1983) and Jude (2018) by Howard John Brenton (1942-) in the light of cultural, political, ideological, and institutional dimensions of hegemony and corruption. Known for his controversial and rebellious pen producing historical, utopian, and directly political plays, Brenton has made outstanding contributions to contemporary British theatre since 1970s as one of the representatives of 'Second Wave' post-war drama. His attribution most of his plays to real historical figures and issues makes his plays distinctive. In the same way, Brenton refers to real lives of Galileo Galilei in The Genius and Euripides in Jude in the contexts of power, violence, oppression and exploitation growing in a modern corrupted society. In the selected plays, the playwright focuses on several facets of hegemony and corruption for the purpose of revealing imbalance of power applied by the state through its hegemonic apparatuses to individuals. The scope of this thesis covers political, ideological cultural and institutional dimensions of hegemony that have frequently been interpreted according to the essence of Gramscian and Marxian concepts of hegemony. The term has recently been associated with the Marxist Italian and socialist politician, Antonio Gramsci (1892-1937) who has described various facets of hegemony in The Sothern Question (1926) and in his posthumous work Prison Notebooks (1975). By removing hegemony from the common concepts of sovereignity and emperorship, Gramsci has interpreted it in original senses of cultural unification and consensus. To Gramsci, the most influential components of hegemony are culture and and education transmission from a dominant group to subaltern groups thanks to schools and intellectuals. Brenton, in The Genius and Jude, dramatises institutional and legitimized state-based predominance over individuals that undermines their freedom. Political and moral corruption in academic milieus, exploitation of academicians, alienated and humiliated conditions of individuals are common themes of the selected plays. While The Genius primarily is emphasizing the oppressive political power applied to scientists, Jude indicates exploitive attitude of the state towards immigrants. The protagonists in both plays are symbolic subjects who have been deprived of their legal rights in a hegemonic and corrupted governmental system. This thesis is intended to present political, ideological, cultural and institutional aspects of hegemonic system, in The Genius and Jude, developing in corrupted societies.