Abstract

Dramatic monologue, in its broadest sense of the term, is a potential poetic form of a particular literary period. It has been transformed through time in keeping with the literary approaches, perspectives and conventions related to the different uses of genre, to changing philosophical thoughts and language condition, and to the social and cultural developments in history. Soliloquy is used for various purposes of the writers, from rhetorical strategies for convincing the audience to adopt certain viewpoints to converting the story time into narrative time, and story space into narrative space. Both dramatic monologue and soliloquy are discursive in that they reflect solitary speech and give the author the opportunity of creating worlds in which we find the a character’s private mind drama within a work of art. Solitary speech in dramatic monologue and in soliloquy is also a highly innovative discursive form in that it modifies the events, foregrounds and exposes a variety of voices in the representation of a single subject on stage. The aim of this paper is to analyze and reflect different uses of such discursive forms in literary tradition.