STEPHENSON’S MAPPA MUNDI: NEW CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BACKGROUND OF BRITISH COLONIALISM

Abstract

This articles is a study of Shelagh Stephenson’s Mappa Mundi (2002), a play which explores the sediments of British Colonialism in the memories/maps of an old, dying ‘Brit’ who gradually wakes into a new consciousness as the agonizing, silenced memories of the past resurge in his mind in the form of confessions before a mixed audience comprised of two families: one from the former colonies and the other from a ‘white’ British family whose members have agrred upon an inter-racial marriage. The article further analyses the quandaries latent in an emerging consciousness needed for multiculturalsim in the 21th century England.