What Goes Around, Comes Around: The Manifestation of Peripeteia in Maugham’s The Unconquered

Sina Movaghati

Abstract


The aim of this article is to elucidate how the British novelist, William Somerset Maugham, exploited the dramatic devices such as Peripeteia and Anagnorisis as the focal devices in his short fiction. The short story, The Unconquered, is selected to pinpoint how Maugham set the stage for the Peripeteic downfall of his protagonist; as a result, the whole plot of the story will be dissected in the light of Aristotelian’s Peripeteia. Furthermore, the interconnection bond between Peripeteia and Anagnorisis, in correlation with the narrative structure, will be probed.

Keywords: Creatures of Circumstance, The Unconquered, Aristotle, Peripeteia, Anagnorisis


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