Jean Reynolds

Pygmalion's Wordplay Jean Reynolds

There's good news for everyone who loves Bernard Shaw: because his works are going out of copyright, we can expect to see many more productions of his wonderful plays - and to be surprised again by his insight, humor, and relevance.
Pygmalion (more familiar in its musical form - My Fair Lady) is probably his most popular play - and his most surprising one.
In Pygmalion's Wordplay, I argue that long before the postmodernists came along, Shaw intuited their ideas about language and explored them in Pygmalion.
This is a book for anyone who loves Shaw and is curious about postmodern ideas about language. In Shaw's hands, Eliza Doolittle's story becomes an enduring work of literature - and the ideas of Derrida, Saussure, and other postmodernists become provocative and accessible.