The Poetics of Two Worlds in Contemporary American Women's Drama (Based on the Works of M. Norman, P. Vogel, D. Brevoort)

The article is dedicated to the study of the principle of two worlds in American women's drama of the late 20th to the early 21st centuries. The aim of the work is to conduct a comprehensive comparative study of the plays by M. Norman "Getting Out," P. Vogel "How I Learned to Drive," and D. Brevoort "Blue Moon Over Memphis" to identify similarities and differences in the artistic representation of two worlds. The research focuses on markers of duality in the chronotope of the aforementioned works, the character gallery, and the method of conflict resolution. Special attention is paid to the comparison of psychological trauma, retrospective memory, and cultural myths as the basis for the liminal states experienced by the dramatic characters. The article emphasizes the specifics of overcoming the boundary between the real and unreal worlds by the characters undergoing deep internal crises. The methodological foundation of the article is a comprehensive approach that combines a comparative method aimed at comparing the three selected dramatic works at various structural levels; motif analysis, which allows tracking the nuances of the doppelgänger motif; and intertextual analysis, which records the integration of cultural and historical facts into the structure of dramatic action. The novelty of this article lies in the fact that it is the first attempt in academic literary studies to examine the classical category of two worlds in the context of the aforementioned works. Moreover, this work fills the existing gap in Russian humanities regarding the study of contemporary English-language women's drama. As a result of the research, the features of the representation of the "second world" through the chronotope, characters, and conflict resolution in the analyzed works are defined and described. The author argues that in the mentioned works, the principle of two worlds loses its traditional destructive nature and begins to perform a therapeutic function. The conclusion is made that the interaction of real and unreal spaces in the plays of M. Norman, P. Vogel, and D. Brevoort serves as a key tool for overcoming psychological traumas, and the ending of each work offers its unique version of reconciling the sought-after dualism.