David Kurnick
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151519
- eISBN:
- 9781400840090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151519.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the collective spaces invoked in James Joyce's career-long obsession with dramatic form—from the epiphanies he wrote as a teenager through his 1918 play Exiles to the closet ...
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This chapter examines the collective spaces invoked in James Joyce's career-long obsession with dramatic form—from the epiphanies he wrote as a teenager through his 1918 play Exiles to the closet drama of the Nighttown (or “Circe”) episode of Ulysses. Joyce's experiments with theatrical form constitute a running commentary on his interest in the “depths” of the psyche. The different conceptions of theatrical space embedded in the idea of epiphany lend a dual valence to this keystone of Joycean aesthetics. If, on the one hand, epiphany imagines a humiliating theater of psychic exposure, on the other it gestures toward a perverse collective space where such exposures would lose their policing force. These isolating and collectivist impulses are both visible in Joyce's play Exiles, which follows Ibsenesque naturalism in its representation of psychic motivation but allows its characters to mount a notable collective resistance to the diagnostic imperative structuring their stage existence.Less
This chapter examines the collective spaces invoked in James Joyce's career-long obsession with dramatic form—from the epiphanies he wrote as a teenager through his 1918 play Exiles to the closet drama of the Nighttown (or “Circe”) episode of Ulysses. Joyce's experiments with theatrical form constitute a running commentary on his interest in the “depths” of the psyche. The different conceptions of theatrical space embedded in the idea of epiphany lend a dual valence to this keystone of Joycean aesthetics. If, on the one hand, epiphany imagines a humiliating theater of psychic exposure, on the other it gestures toward a perverse collective space where such exposures would lose their policing force. These isolating and collectivist impulses are both visible in Joyce's play Exiles, which follows Ibsenesque naturalism in its representation of psychic motivation but allows its characters to mount a notable collective resistance to the diagnostic imperative structuring their stage existence.
Victoria Wohl
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691166506
- eISBN:
- 9781400866403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166506.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated by two separate but intersecting problems. The first is the problem of Euripidean tragedy. There are eighteen extant tragedies confidently attributed to Euripides and many of them are, for lack of a better word, odd. With their disjointed, action-packed plots, comic touches, and frequent happy endings, they seem to stretch the generic boundaries of tragedy as we usually think of it. The second problem is the relation between the play and its contemporary world, the political world of democratic Athens. Tragic dramas were, almost without exception, set in the mythic past, not in the fifth-century polis, and almost never allude overtly to their contemporary moment. The remainder of the chapter discusses the meaning of politics of form by way of a brief illustration.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated by two separate but intersecting problems. The first is the problem of Euripidean tragedy. There are eighteen extant tragedies confidently attributed to Euripides and many of them are, for lack of a better word, odd. With their disjointed, action-packed plots, comic touches, and frequent happy endings, they seem to stretch the generic boundaries of tragedy as we usually think of it. The second problem is the relation between the play and its contemporary world, the political world of democratic Athens. Tragic dramas were, almost without exception, set in the mythic past, not in the fifth-century polis, and almost never allude overtly to their contemporary moment. The remainder of the chapter discusses the meaning of politics of form by way of a brief illustration.
Christopher B. Balme
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184447
- eISBN:
- 9780191674266
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184447.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms ...
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This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms of their indigenous traditions with the Western dramatic form. These experiments are termed ‘syncretic theatre’. The study provides a theoretically sophisticated, cross-cultural comparative approach to a wide number of writers, regions, and theatre movements, ranging from Maori, Aboriginal, and Native American theatre to Township theatre in South Africa. Writers studied include Nobel Prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Rabindranath Tagore, along with others such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jack Davis, Girish Karnad, and Tomson Highway. This book demonstrates how the dynamics of syncretic theatrical texts function in performance. It combines cultural semiotics with performance analysis to provide an important contribution to the growing field of post-colonial drama and intercultural performance.Less
This book is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms of their indigenous traditions with the Western dramatic form. These experiments are termed ‘syncretic theatre’. The study provides a theoretically sophisticated, cross-cultural comparative approach to a wide number of writers, regions, and theatre movements, ranging from Maori, Aboriginal, and Native American theatre to Township theatre in South Africa. Writers studied include Nobel Prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Rabindranath Tagore, along with others such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jack Davis, Girish Karnad, and Tomson Highway. This book demonstrates how the dynamics of syncretic theatrical texts function in performance. It combines cultural semiotics with performance analysis to provide an important contribution to the growing field of post-colonial drama and intercultural performance.
Jérôme de la Gorce
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635849
- eISBN:
- 9780748671120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635849.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Please Provide (as in Journal Copy) It was customary in the seventeenth century to assimilate court ballet with drama, as both art forms were seen to strive for a common aim: the imitation or ...
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Please Provide (as in Journal Copy) It was customary in the seventeenth century to assimilate court ballet with drama, as both art forms were seen to strive for a common aim: the imitation or representation of nature. However, critics were also keen to point out their essential differences, for, unlike tragedy, ballet disregarded the rules of new-classical aesthetics and its only concern seemed to be to please and to entertain. This was particularly evident in the court ballets written by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin between 1639 and 1641. Unsurprisingly, they were singled out for special criticism by theorists of the ballet, who highlighted their dramatic shortcomings, and failed to see that they constituted another form of dramatic aesthetics, which was conspicuous precisely because of its emancipation from the structures of Aristotelian theory. It could be said that the ballets of Desmarets had all the hallmarks of contemporary tragicomedy: irregularity of construction, diversity of action, disregard for the unity of tone, etc., but in adapting the principles of this new aesthetics to the ballet, Desmarets ran the risk of transgressing the boundaries of tragicomedy and even of drama, approaching a genre which was no longer dramatic but narratice, i.e. epic poetry.Less
Please Provide (as in Journal Copy) It was customary in the seventeenth century to assimilate court ballet with drama, as both art forms were seen to strive for a common aim: the imitation or representation of nature. However, critics were also keen to point out their essential differences, for, unlike tragedy, ballet disregarded the rules of new-classical aesthetics and its only concern seemed to be to please and to entertain. This was particularly evident in the court ballets written by Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin between 1639 and 1641. Unsurprisingly, they were singled out for special criticism by theorists of the ballet, who highlighted their dramatic shortcomings, and failed to see that they constituted another form of dramatic aesthetics, which was conspicuous precisely because of its emancipation from the structures of Aristotelian theory. It could be said that the ballets of Desmarets had all the hallmarks of contemporary tragicomedy: irregularity of construction, diversity of action, disregard for the unity of tone, etc., but in adapting the principles of this new aesthetics to the ballet, Desmarets ran the risk of transgressing the boundaries of tragicomedy and even of drama, approaching a genre which was no longer dramatic but narratice, i.e. epic poetry.
Steven C. Caton
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520210820
- eISBN:
- 9780520919891
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520210820.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Middle Eastern Cultural Anthropology
This chapter discusses how Lawrence of Arabia becomes implicated in a more significant story about Hollywood's embarrassing political history. It shows the changes Michael Wilson (one of the film's ...
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This chapter discusses how Lawrence of Arabia becomes implicated in a more significant story about Hollywood's embarrassing political history. It shows the changes Michael Wilson (one of the film's screenwriters) made on the script of Lawrence of Arabia, as well as the controversy that surrounded the Michael Wilson affair. It first provides some background information on Wilson and at the same time relates how he learns to become political in his art and the constraints placed upon him by government and industry censorship. It then studies the structure of the final screenplay and describes Lean's reservations about his treatment and Robert Bolt's innovations in dramatic form. The chapter also looks at some of Lean's dissatisfactions with Wilson's artistic treatment and the cuts made in the film that damaged it considerably.Less
This chapter discusses how Lawrence of Arabia becomes implicated in a more significant story about Hollywood's embarrassing political history. It shows the changes Michael Wilson (one of the film's screenwriters) made on the script of Lawrence of Arabia, as well as the controversy that surrounded the Michael Wilson affair. It first provides some background information on Wilson and at the same time relates how he learns to become political in his art and the constraints placed upon him by government and industry censorship. It then studies the structure of the final screenplay and describes Lean's reservations about his treatment and Robert Bolt's innovations in dramatic form. The chapter also looks at some of Lean's dissatisfactions with Wilson's artistic treatment and the cuts made in the film that damaged it considerably.
Allison K. Deutermann
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474411264
- eISBN:
- 9781474422154
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474411264.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The book’s introduction maps out its contribution to ongoing critical conversations surrounding literary form, the history of the body and the senses, the experience and effects of sound, and ...
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The book’s introduction maps out its contribution to ongoing critical conversations surrounding literary form, the history of the body and the senses, the experience and effects of sound, and historical phenomenology. Through brief readings of The Revenger’s Tragedy and Epicoene, it introduces the two forms, and the two auditory models, that are at the heart of this analysis. How these two forms developed, and how and why hearing became so central to their content, plot, and structure, are introduced as the key questions that motivate this study.Less
The book’s introduction maps out its contribution to ongoing critical conversations surrounding literary form, the history of the body and the senses, the experience and effects of sound, and historical phenomenology. Through brief readings of The Revenger’s Tragedy and Epicoene, it introduces the two forms, and the two auditory models, that are at the heart of this analysis. How these two forms developed, and how and why hearing became so central to their content, plot, and structure, are introduced as the key questions that motivate this study.
Bradley Ryner
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748684656
- eISBN:
- 9780748697113
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748684656.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book argues for a generative relationship between economic thought and dramatic form in early modern English drama by examining representations of economic exchange in plays and mercantile ...
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This book argues for a generative relationship between economic thought and dramatic form in early modern English drama by examining representations of economic exchange in plays and mercantile treatises written in the early decades the seventeenth century when economic thinkers associated with “mercantilism” were re-examined how they conceptualised and depicted commerce as a system. Treatises by Thomas Milles, Gerard Malynes, Edward Misselden, and Thomas Mun are considered alongside plays by William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Walter Mountfort, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, and Richard Brome. Adapting approaches pioneered by scholars of Science Studies and the Rhetoric of Economics, Bradley Ryner compares the formal features of mercantile treatises and plays. He argues that Renaissance playwrights crafted absorbingly self-reflexive models of economic exchange by making productive use of the imperfection of their metaphors, the representational instability of their props and characters, the necessarily limited vantage points of their audiences, and the interpretive energies and generic expectations of these audiences. He shows how these techniques facilitated thinking through questions that were pertinent to seventeenth-century audiences, such as how to conceptualise royal finanace, currency exchange, global trade, and poverty as part of a systemic totality -- an ‘economy’ in the modern sense.Less
This book argues for a generative relationship between economic thought and dramatic form in early modern English drama by examining representations of economic exchange in plays and mercantile treatises written in the early decades the seventeenth century when economic thinkers associated with “mercantilism” were re-examined how they conceptualised and depicted commerce as a system. Treatises by Thomas Milles, Gerard Malynes, Edward Misselden, and Thomas Mun are considered alongside plays by William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Walter Mountfort, Thomas Heywood, Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, and Richard Brome. Adapting approaches pioneered by scholars of Science Studies and the Rhetoric of Economics, Bradley Ryner compares the formal features of mercantile treatises and plays. He argues that Renaissance playwrights crafted absorbingly self-reflexive models of economic exchange by making productive use of the imperfection of their metaphors, the representational instability of their props and characters, the necessarily limited vantage points of their audiences, and the interpretive energies and generic expectations of these audiences. He shows how these techniques facilitated thinking through questions that were pertinent to seventeenth-century audiences, such as how to conceptualise royal finanace, currency exchange, global trade, and poverty as part of a systemic totality -- an ‘economy’ in the modern sense.
Robin Nelson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719073106
- eISBN:
- 9781781701119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719073106.003.0013
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter articulates different aspects of the force-field impacting on current TV drama provision. It considers that new accounts of the pleasures of television are required in respect of the ...
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This chapter articulates different aspects of the force-field impacting on current TV drama provision. It considers that new accounts of the pleasures of television are required in respect of the specificity of the medium, introducing the key factors in the force-field of both the production of contemporary TV drama and the relevant core debates in critical analysis of the television medium and its dramatic forms. Whilst recognising the impact of visual style, attention is paid to narrative forms as well as aspects of drama, as traditionally conceived. The emphasis is on the Anglo-American axis, but the broad context of contemporary television production is recognised to be globalising in tendency. One of the tensions at the heart of the discussion, however, is that audiences worldwide are known to prefer local product, given the choice.Less
This chapter articulates different aspects of the force-field impacting on current TV drama provision. It considers that new accounts of the pleasures of television are required in respect of the specificity of the medium, introducing the key factors in the force-field of both the production of contemporary TV drama and the relevant core debates in critical analysis of the television medium and its dramatic forms. Whilst recognising the impact of visual style, attention is paid to narrative forms as well as aspects of drama, as traditionally conceived. The emphasis is on the Anglo-American axis, but the broad context of contemporary television production is recognised to be globalising in tendency. One of the tensions at the heart of the discussion, however, is that audiences worldwide are known to prefer local product, given the choice.
Christopher Collard
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781904675730
- eISBN:
- 9781781385364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781904675730.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This paper (an Inaugural Lecture) discusses the fundamental tasks of scholar and student: the closest possible comprehension of the text must precede, but also aid, appreciation of vocabulary, style ...
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This paper (an Inaugural Lecture) discusses the fundamental tasks of scholar and student: the closest possible comprehension of the text must precede, but also aid, appreciation of vocabulary, style and poetic idiom; then comes understanding of dramatic form; last, attention to cultural background and presuppositions. All these must be woven into play-commentaries and general studies which inform the reader, but are frank with problems, and which suggest to the sensibility. A final section raises the difficulties and methods of translating tragic texts (the author has translated Aeschylus) – but also the rewards, not least in widening access to their artistic and emotive power.Less
This paper (an Inaugural Lecture) discusses the fundamental tasks of scholar and student: the closest possible comprehension of the text must precede, but also aid, appreciation of vocabulary, style and poetic idiom; then comes understanding of dramatic form; last, attention to cultural background and presuppositions. All these must be woven into play-commentaries and general studies which inform the reader, but are frank with problems, and which suggest to the sensibility. A final section raises the difficulties and methods of translating tragic texts (the author has translated Aeschylus) – but also the rewards, not least in widening access to their artistic and emotive power.
Christopher Collard (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781904675730
- eISBN:
- 9781781385364
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781904675730.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Twenty of the author's shorter pieces first published between 1963 and 2004 (when the book was initially prepared), which emphasize textual questions, verbal criticism, dramatic form and general ...
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Twenty of the author's shorter pieces first published between 1963 and 2004 (when the book was initially prepared), which emphasize textual questions, verbal criticism, dramatic form and general interpretation. They are grouped roughly under the three words of the title, and handle subjects ranging from A: phenomena general to Greek Tragedy: its demand upon students and readers; stichomythia; the fragmentary tragedian Chaeremon; the attribution of a fragmentary Pirithous-play; the textual quality of quotations in Athenaeus; review of an important select edition of fragments; through (B): some topics particular to Euripides: scribal hands in a famous manuscript; the problematic Funeral Oration in Suppliants; that play's disputed date; appreciation of a choral ode in Hecuba; specialist lexicography of the poet; reviews of the now standard critical edition of the poet; to (C): appreciations of some scholars of Tragedy and particularly Euripides prominent since the 16th Century: Dirk Canter, Joshua Barnes, Jeremiah Markland, Samuel Musgrave, Peter Elmsley, James Henry Monk, and Frederick Apthorp Paley. All pieces have been edited, revised and supplemented with notes and bibliography as far as 2006. The problems of collecting and editing fragmentary texts emerge as the author's regular interest, anticipating his concentration on this work since 1995, in five collaborative editions and some shorter studies, some of which are listed or heralded in his List of Publications at the end of the volume.Less
Twenty of the author's shorter pieces first published between 1963 and 2004 (when the book was initially prepared), which emphasize textual questions, verbal criticism, dramatic form and general interpretation. They are grouped roughly under the three words of the title, and handle subjects ranging from A: phenomena general to Greek Tragedy: its demand upon students and readers; stichomythia; the fragmentary tragedian Chaeremon; the attribution of a fragmentary Pirithous-play; the textual quality of quotations in Athenaeus; review of an important select edition of fragments; through (B): some topics particular to Euripides: scribal hands in a famous manuscript; the problematic Funeral Oration in Suppliants; that play's disputed date; appreciation of a choral ode in Hecuba; specialist lexicography of the poet; reviews of the now standard critical edition of the poet; to (C): appreciations of some scholars of Tragedy and particularly Euripides prominent since the 16th Century: Dirk Canter, Joshua Barnes, Jeremiah Markland, Samuel Musgrave, Peter Elmsley, James Henry Monk, and Frederick Apthorp Paley. All pieces have been edited, revised and supplemented with notes and bibliography as far as 2006. The problems of collecting and editing fragmentary texts emerge as the author's regular interest, anticipating his concentration on this work since 1995, in five collaborative editions and some shorter studies, some of which are listed or heralded in his List of Publications at the end of the volume.
