THE PERSISTENT “I-WORLD”: POSSIBLE WORLDS IN BERTOLT BRECHT’S MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN

The present article attempts to apply Marie-Laure Ryan’s theory of “Possible Worlds,” as a branch of Cognitive Poetics, to Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (۱۹۴۱) to show how characters’ different treatments of the world, especially Mother Courage herself, define and move the narrative structure of this play forward. This study aims to look into how the characters in Brecht’s play represent different types of possible alternative worlds, such as Knowledge worlds, Prospective Extensions of Knowledge worlds, Intention worlds, Obligation worlds, Wish worlds, and Fantasy Universes. This reading also hopes to examine what Ryan calls “the textual actual world,” and pursue the internal conflicts between the actual world of the text and the private worlds of different characters. Central to these conflicts is the conflict between Mother Courage’s I-world and the play’s textual actual world. Her persistent attempts to make money out of the context of the war in this play lead to many tragic consequences from that primary I-world. The study finally concludes in determining these worlds’ interactions and their conflicts and how they make it possible for the plot to develop from one scene to another. By using such conflicts and world creations, Brecht manages to form his plot and show his intentions and finally reaches what Ryan calls “tellability”.

Keywords:

Possible Worlds Theory , Bertolt Brecht , tellability , Mother Courage and Her Children , modern drama