A BAKHTINIAN READING OF CARYL CHURCHILL'S FEMINIST DISCOURSE IN TOP GIRLS.

Caryl Churchill is one of the most distinguished contemporary British women playwrights to emerge in the post-war era. She is a playwright who has managed to enter successfully the male canon and gain wide recognition among theatre audiences and critics. Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, first performed at London's Royal Court Theatre on 28 August 1982 and directed by Max Stafford-Clark, is one of the most important plays of feminism to date. The play examines the status of women in the world especially in the workplace through the life stories of five important women characters of history. In this regard Top Girls relates itself to the Bakhtinian concept of carnival through the scenes of banquet. This paper aims at reading Churchill's Top Girls with a close reference to the theory of carnivalesque depicted by Michael Bakhtin in his critical work on Rabelais, Rabelais and his World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]