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Abstract
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For several decades, a literary text was considered as an independent and autonomous thing and the relationship between this text and other texts or other discourses was not taken seriously. However, modern literary criticism and theory has focused on the relationship between a text and other texts and discourses. This literary theory is called intertextuality. According to intertextuality ideas, a text is a product of ideologies, dialogues, and discourses of a society in which the product is created. The first aim of this thesis is to analyze George Bernard Shaw’s plays and prefaces through dialogic explanation and intertextuality to unravel Shaw’s moral, social, and political arguments. Said differently, the present study aims to extract the argument and the meaning of these plays and prefaces through the dynamic relationship between historical background, the text and the discourses out of the text. Furthermore, the present study also intends to analyze Shaw’s prefaces in order to represent the philosophical, religious and political interactions. Additionally, the present thesis is interested to know the function of dialogic explanation in Shaw’s plays. The relationship between the prefaces and the plays also is a goal in this research because understanding the relationship will be useful for extracting the meaning of the play. Since Shaw draws heavily on other sources for his plays, this study will elaborate on these sources in order to scrutinize the influence of them on Shaw’s ideas and beliefs. Likewise, Shaw focused on notions such as capitalism, poverty, religion, and class conflict in his plays. Finally, this thesis makes an effort to show that Shaw challenged the monologue nature of the plays at that time.
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