They form the background to his dramas, which provide an imaginative elaboration of what they really amount to. It is inevitable that someone whose aim in life is to be ‘liberate from the structures’ should be in deep conflict with these sublime works of art. Their very aesthetic power lends persuasive force, and in the face of this compelling image of the lost common culture the sensitive dissident must marshal whatever weapons lie to hand, in order to cast off and neutralize its spell. The feminist, deconstructionist and Marxist ‘readings’ of traditional texts are therefore tributes to their power