Adaptive Creativity in Textualization of History in Edward Bond’s "Narrow Road to the Deep North"

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD in English Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Alborz Campus, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran.

10.22034/cls.2026.144019.1531

Abstract

In Narrow Road to the Deep North, Edward Bond presents his distinctive, creative reading of the life of Basho, the seventeenth-century poet of haiku, to indicate that for him history is not a linear, coherent, and taken for granted narrative, but rather an arbitrary text that is capable of being a site of projecting one’s concerns for investigating into contemporary issues. In order to explore Bond’s distinctive approach to history, this study applies and merges two theoretical frameworks, namely theories of adaptation and new historicism, focusing on the way the playwright appropriates history to comment on the present. The main question of the study is to ask how Bond the playwright reflects and modernizes Basho’s life by taking into account the determinants of why, where and when. This study is significantly worth undertaking as it can expose the dramatic strategy that Bond applies in his historical plays including Lear, Bingo, and The Fool. Due to the playwright’s antifoundational reading of the past, it can be concluded that Bond’s adaptation of Basho’s life serves his subversive approach to the status quo.d

Keywords

Main Subjects

Critical Literary Studies

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 07 March 2026

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 05 July 2025
  • Revise Date: 10 February 2026
  • Accept Date: 07 March 2026

Share

How to cite

Statistics