Jessica Waldoff
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195151978
- eISBN:
- 9780199870387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151978.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter takes up the question of how an individual event, such as a recognition scene, functions with respect to the operatic plot as a whole. It explores the notion of plot in critical works ...
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This chapter takes up the question of how an individual event, such as a recognition scene, functions with respect to the operatic plot as a whole. It explores the notion of plot in critical works ranging from Aristotle's Poetics to Peter Brooks's Reading for the Plot, and differentiates plot from plotting. Plot in Aristotle's definition is static, “the structure of the events”, while plotting, according to Brooks, is active — the dynamic process that propels the work forward. The chapter illustrates the interaction of recognition and “operatic plotting” with a detailed consideration of the multiple plot of Le nozze di Figaro. Attention is given to prominent moments of recognition, including the dénouement in the Act IV finale. The last section of this chapter is devoted to comments about plot dramaturgy in Mozart's letters.Less
This chapter takes up the question of how an individual event, such as a recognition scene, functions with respect to the operatic plot as a whole. It explores the notion of plot in critical works ranging from Aristotle's Poetics to Peter Brooks's Reading for the Plot, and differentiates plot from plotting. Plot in Aristotle's definition is static, “the structure of the events”, while plotting, according to Brooks, is active — the dynamic process that propels the work forward. The chapter illustrates the interaction of recognition and “operatic plotting” with a detailed consideration of the multiple plot of Le nozze di Figaro. Attention is given to prominent moments of recognition, including the dénouement in the Act IV finale. The last section of this chapter is devoted to comments about plot dramaturgy in Mozart's letters.
Kylee-Anne Hingston
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620757
- eISBN:
- 9781789629491
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620757.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This afterword reminds readers of how thoroughly Victorians conflated body and text in their literary and medical rhetoric, using Robert Buchanan’s The Fleshly School of Poetry as an example. ...
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This afterword reminds readers of how thoroughly Victorians conflated body and text in their literary and medical rhetoric, using Robert Buchanan’s The Fleshly School of Poetry as an example. Additionally, it reiterates the mutability of the Victorians’ understanding of the human body’s centrality to identity, noting that as disability became increasingly medicalized and the soul increasingly psychologized, the mode of looking at deviant bodies shifted from gaping at spectacle to scrutinizing specimen, and the shape of narratives evolved from lengthy multiple-plot novels to slim case studies. However, Victorian fiction narratives consistently remained ambivalent when categorizing disability, aligning it with both abnormality and the commonplace.Less
This afterword reminds readers of how thoroughly Victorians conflated body and text in their literary and medical rhetoric, using Robert Buchanan’s The Fleshly School of Poetry as an example. Additionally, it reiterates the mutability of the Victorians’ understanding of the human body’s centrality to identity, noting that as disability became increasingly medicalized and the soul increasingly psychologized, the mode of looking at deviant bodies shifted from gaping at spectacle to scrutinizing specimen, and the shape of narratives evolved from lengthy multiple-plot novels to slim case studies. However, Victorian fiction narratives consistently remained ambivalent when categorizing disability, aligning it with both abnormality and the commonplace.
