A Critical Study of the Role of “Advantage” in Constructing Contradictory Perspectives toward Religious Institutions in Robert Bolt’s ‘A Man for All Seasons’

Abstract

The present study critically investigates the role of advantage in constructing different or contradictory perspectives toward religious institutions in Robert Bolt’s ‘A man for all seasons’. The corpus of the present study consists of the collection of specific dialogues taken from the body of the play that serve the objectives of the present study. The current research seeks to find out specific ideological textual elements that contribute to point out how advantage theoretically constructs various perspectives. Theoretically, this study is grounded on critical discourse analysis, and Norman Fairclough’s three dimensional approach applied for the analytical processes. The departing point of this study is that it focuses on the type of advantage as the main reason for the rise of any ideology and discourse. It was concluded that the opposite types of advantages in the same fields of action would result in contradictory discourses, even if they have sprung from the very ideology.

Keywords: advantage; ideology; perspective; critical discourse analysis