Visibility graphs and blindspots: Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies and its mathematical poetics

Abstract

This article examines the use of mathematics in the 2003 play Incendies by the Lebanese–Québécois playwright Wajdi Mouawad. Mathematics functions not only as a theme in the play, but also as a mechanism that enables the main characters to decipher the mysteries surrounding their identity which are revealed in their deceased mother’s will. In their reluctant quest to find a father and a brother that are unknown to them, the twins Jeanne and Simon discover the unsettling truth that the two are actually one person, in part by turning to number theory and visibility graphs. This article argues that the mathematical dimensions of the play serve as a mise en abyme of its narrative structure and its Oedipian conclusion.

Keywords

Lebanese civil war in fiction literature and mathematics Wajdi Mouawad Oedipus myth twenty-first-century Québécois theatre

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