Patrick Pfannschmidt

Masculinity in Richard Bean's Pub Quiz Is Life Patrick Pfannschmidt

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English - History of Literature, Eras, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Department of English and Linguistics), course: British Literature I - Contemporary Drama, language: English, abstract: Richard Bean is a British comedian and author of several theatre plays, which can be categorized as contemporary literature. His work "Pub Quiz Is Life" is about the veteran Lee, who, together with his father Bunny, his friend Woody and pretty Melissa, initiates a Pub Quiz Team in order to form a opponent team against the teachers' frequently winning team. In this paper, I want to work out how Bean uses different literary style elements for bringing up metaphors of masculinity and mankind in "Pub Quiz Is Life" to the audience. Primarily, I want to illustrate masculinity by the stage directions of the play to show that the different settings transport virile moods. In a second step, I want to put focus on the three male characters of the play. Lee, Bunny and Woody have different versions in expressing maningful behavior. In this part, I want to present several text passages which will be undergirded with the representation theory of the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman. There are several songs, bands, and musicians presented in the play in different ways. Music is a very powerful medium to transport moods and feelings to the audience, regardless of whether they are given in stage directions or text passages in a book or if they are played on stage as background music or sung by some actor. Thus, this paper is a written work on a written play, which is not hearable in consequence. In this last part, I will work with text passages of the play, with lyrics of several given songs, and with the images and historical backgrounds of the bands and musicians.