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Poetics (Dover Thrift Editions Ser.)
by AristotleAmong the most influential books in Western civilization, Aristotle's Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. In it are mentioned not only epic and dithyrambic poetry, but tragedy, comedy, and flute and lyre playing. Aristotle's conception of tragedy, i.e. the depiction of a heroic action that arouses pity and fear in the spectators and brings about a catharsis of those emotions, has helped perpetuate the Greek ideal of drama to the present day. Similarly, his dictums concerning unity of time and place, the necessity for a play to have a beginning, middle, and end, the idea of the tragic flaw and other concepts have had enormous influence down through the ages.Throughout the work, Aristotle reveals not only a great intellect analyzing the nature of poetry, music, and drama, but also a down-to-earth understanding of the practical problems facing the poet and playwright. Now, in this inexpensive edition of the Poetics, readers can enjoy the seminal insights of one of the greatest minds in human history as he sets about laying the foundations of critical thought about the arts.
Poetics: A Treatise On Government (Dover Thrift Editions)
by AristotleAmong the most influential books in Western civilization, the Poetics is really a treatise on fine art. It offers seminal ideas on the nature of drama, tragedy, poetry, music, and more, including such concepts as catharsis, the tragic flaw, unities of time and place and other rules of drama. This inexpensive edition enables readers to enjoy the critical insights of one humanity's greatest minds laying the foundations for thought about the arts.
Poetics
by AristotleOne of the most powerful, perceptive and influential works of criticism in Western literary history In his near-contemporary account of classical Greek tragedy, Aristotle examines the dramatic elements of plot, character, language and spectacle that combine to produce pity and fear in the audience, and asks why we derive pleasure from this apparently painful process. Taking examples from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the Poetics introduced into literary criticism such central concepts as mimesis ('imitation'), hamartia ('error') and katharsis ('purification'). Aristotle explains how the most effective tragedies rely on complication and resolution, recognition and reversals. The Poetics has informed thinking about drama ever since.Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Malcolm Heath
Poetics of History: Rousseau and the Theater of Originary Mimesis
by Philippe Lacoue-LabartheRousseau’s opposition to the theater is well known: But is it possible that Rousseau’s texts reveal a different conception of theatrical imitation? This short but potent text from a powerful European thinker places Rousseau at the origin of modern speculative philosophy by showing that his thinking on the theater articulates a radical thinking of originary mimesis that was to inflect the future of philosophy.
The Poetics of Imitation in the Italian Theatre of the Renaissance
by Salvatore Di MariaThe theatre of the Italian Renaissance was directly inspired by the classical stage of Greece and Rome, and many have argued that the former imitated the latter without developing a new theatre tradition. In this book, Salvatore DiMaria investigates aspects of innovation that made Italian Renaissance stage a modern, original theatre in its own right. He provides important evidence for creative imitation at work by comparing sources and imitations - incuding Machiavelli's Mandragola and Clizia, Cecchi's Assiuolo, Groto's Emilia, and Dolce's Marianna - and highlighting source elements that these playwrights chose to adopt, modify, or omit entirely.DiMaria delves into how playwrights not only brought inventive new dramaturgical methods to the genre, but also incorporated significant aspects of the morals and aesthetic preferences familiar to contemporary spectators into their works. By proposing the theatre of the Italian Renaissance as a poetic window into the living realities of sixteenth-century Italy, he provides a fresh approach to reading the works of this period.
The Poetics of Performance Diagrams (Elements in Contemporary Performance Texts)
by Andrej MirčevThis Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.
A Poetics of Third Theatre: Performer Training, Dramaturgy, Cultural Action (Perspectives on Performer Training)
by Jane Turner Patrick CampbellA Poetics of Third Theatre offers an in-depth, critical analysis of Third Theatre, a transnational community of theatre groups and artists united by a shared set of values and a laboratory attitude. This book takes a genealogical account of Third Theatre as a concept and a practice that draws attention to the historical Third Theatre Encounters that have taken place across Europe and Latin America since the 1970s. The work of renowned Third Theatre groups and organisations, such as LUME (Brazil), Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru), Triangle Theatre (UK) and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium – NTL (Denmark), are explored to reveal how a multifarious poetics of Third Theatre is manifest through these artists’ approaches to performer training, dramaturgy and cultural action. Three critical pillars – unconditional hospitality, artisanal craft and (re)enchantment – are employed in order to illuminate the shared ethos of the Third Theatre community and its exemplification as a mode of cultural performance. This informative text will be of great use to students and scholars of drama and theatre studies, and its dedicated section on performer training exercises offers the reader pathways into an experiential engagement with Third Theatre craft.
Poetry on Stage: The Theatre of the Italian Neo-Avant-Garde (Toronto Italian Studies)
by Gianluca RizzoPoetry on Stage focuses on exchanges between the writers of the Italian neo-avant-garde with the actors, directors, and playwrights of the Nuovo Teatro. The book sheds light on a forgotten chapter of twentieth-century Italian literature, arguing that the theatre was the ideal incubator for stylistic and linguistic experiments and a means through which authors could establish direct contact with their audience and verify solutions to the practical and theoretical problems raised by their stances in politics and poetics. A robust analysis of a number of exemplary texts grounds these issues in the plays and poems produced at the time and connects them with the experimentations subsequently carried out by some of the same artists. In-depth interviews with four of the most influential figures in the field – critic Valentina Valentini, actor and director Pippo Di Marca, author Giuliano Scabia, and the late poet Nanni Balestrini – conclude the volume, providing invaluable first-hand testimony that brings to life the people and controversies discussed.
Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature
by Nathan Suhr-SytsmaPoetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature reveals an intriguing history of relationships among poets and editors from Ireland and Nigeria, as well as Britain and the Caribbean, during the mid-twentieth-century era of decolonization. The book explores what such leading anglophone poets as Seamus Heaney, Christopher Okigbo, and Derek Walcott had in common: 'peripheral' origins and a desire to address transnational publics without expatriating themselves. The book reconstructs how they gained the imprimatur of both local and London-based cultural institutions. It shows, furthermore, how political crises challenged them to reconsider their poetry's publics. Making substantial use of unpublished archival material, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma examines poems in print, often the pages on which they first appeared, in order to chart the transformation of the anglophone literary world. He argues that these poets' achievements cannot be extricated from the transnational networks through which their poems circulated - and which they in turn remade.
A Point of Order
by Ed SimpsonComedy / 4m, 2f / Interior / Ever since the leading employer left for sunny Georgia, times have been tough in Randolphsburgh, PA. the nation's leading importer of overcast. Hoping to create a media event that will turn things around, a committee is organizing the dedication of a statue of the town's only famous citizen, short, bald space shuttle astronaut Dr. Dick Davidson. With three weeks remaining before the gala event, the flirtatious former cheerleader, the avid gardener and school band director, the hypochondriacal shoe salesman, the cynical art history professor and the timid, pistol packing storekeeper are finding that everything that can go wrong has. Facing certain embarrassment, probable financial liability and possible legal action, the committee reluctantly turns to Randolphsburg's most hated citizen a vindictive millionaire. Rave reviews greet this wacky delight by the author of The Battle of Shallowford and The Comet of St. Loomis .
Pointing the Way
by Martin Buber Maurice S. Friedman"These essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, in which the eminent philosopher relates the 'I-Thou' dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature and art, reveal Buber in the process of responding to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enable the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward 'authentic existence.'" -Back Cover
Poison, Play, and Duel: A Study in Hamlet (Routledge Revivals)
by Nigel AlexanderFirst published in 1971, Poison, Play and Duel explores the dominant symbols of the language and action of Hamlet. The Ghost first reveals that Claudius murdered his brother by poison, and this act of poisoning is then dramatically presented before the King. The ultimate consequence of the ‘poison in jest’ performed by the actors is the poisoned ‘play’ with rapiers between Laertes and Hamlet. This representation of violence, and the vengeful response to violence, creates the moral and the psychological problems of Hamlet. Critics naturally question, and disagree about, the way that Hamlet plays his role in this play because the role of Hamlet is a theatrical device designed to bring all human actions into debate and question. It is hardly surprising that audiences have seen mirrored in Hamlet their own most fundamental and inescapable problems. Nigel Alexander shows how Shakespeare, like Raphael, Titian and other Renaissance artists, developed and adapted the imagery inherited from the Christian and classical past. The battle within the soul, the choice of life, the hunt of passion, the triple face of prudence and the dance of the graces are given dramatic habitation in Hamlet’s soliloquies, in the inner-play and in the savage contrast of sexuality between Gertrude and Ophelia. This book will be of interest to students of literature, drama, psychology and philosophy.
The Poison Tree
by Ronald RibmanFull length, Drama / 13 m / Simple sets / Short scenes in a section of a Western state prison set aside for Black inmates dramatize how the complicity between a sadistic white guard and a benumbed long-term prisoner brings about the suicide of a young inmate up for parole. This look at prison life is strong, vivid and startling. / "A moving, compassionate play."-The New York Times
Polish Joke: And Other Plays (Books That Changed the World)
by David IvesA collection of four works from the American playwright known as &“wizardly . . . magical and funny . . . a master of language&” (The New York Times). This collection brings together four full-length plays from the same dazzling pen that produced the one-act comic masterpieces of All in the Timing. Polish Joke is about a young Polish-American&’s trip through ethnic stereotypes. Nine-year-old Midwesterner Jan Bogdan Sadlowski, nicknamed Jasiu, is told by his uncle that Poles are thought to be &“backward, stupid, inept, and gloomy.&” The only way out is for Jasiu &“to impersonate someone not Polish.&” In Don Juan in Chicago, a Renaissance innocent makes a deal with the devil, only to become a reluctant Latin lover. Ancient History is a comedy-drama about the holy war that breaks out when two people from two very different cultures fall in love. The Red Address paints a searing portrait of a man with a secret who is forced by tragedy into self-revelation. Praise for David Ives &“A pitcher with a great many tricks up his sleeve. He throws like an all-star . . . mixing comedic moods and styles with a dizzying assortment of changeups.&” —The New York Times Polish Joke &“Ives skillfully climbs the slippery slope of political incorrectness without a single mean-spirited stumble.&” —CurtainUp Don Juan in Chicago &“Ives invents an irresistible premise and has fun making good on its promise.&” —Los Angeles Times Ancient History &“A riveting theatrical experience.&” —Show Business The Red Address &“Mix Glengarry Glen Ross with Glen or Glenda . . . A tough-talking drama that mixes business sharks, blackmail, cross-dressing and murder.&” —Variety
Polish Romantic Drama: Three Plays in English Translation (Polish Theatre Archives Ser. #Vol. 5)
by Harold B. SegelThis is the first volume in English to be devoted entirely to Polish Romantic drama. It contains translations of three major plays: Forefathers; Eve, Part III, by Adam Mickiewics; The Un-Divine Comedy by Zygmunt Krasinski; and Fantazy by Juliusz Slowacki. In his highly informative introduction, Professor Segel discusses the plays against the background of the Romantic movement in Poland and points out their ideological and artistic importance. As products of a revolutionary Poland; they were written and published in Paris by writers who either resettled there after the Insurrection of 1830 or otherwise identified with the Great Emigration; they are permeated with the spirit of Romantic Rebellion, with pleas for universial justice, and with queries concerning the role of the poet in society. Brillant productions of the plays in Poland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries gave impetus to an entire tradition of modern Polish theatrical experimentation as well as dramatic writing which extends to the present day.
Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre
by Kailin WrightIn Canada, adaptation is a national mode of survival, but it is also a way to create radical change. Throughout history, Canadians have been inheritors and adaptors: of political systems, stories, and customs from the old world and the new. More than updating popular narratives, adaptation informs understandings of culture, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as individual experiences. In Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre Kailin Wright investigates adaptations that retell popular stories with a political purpose and examines how they acknowledge diverse realities and transform our past. Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre explores adaptations of Canadian history, Shakespeare, Greek mythologies, and Indigenous history by playwrights who identify as English-Canadian, African-Canadian, French-Canadian, French, Kuna Rappahannock, and Delaware from the Six Nations. Along with new considerations of the activist potential of popular Canadian theatre, this book outlines eight strategies that adaptors employ to challenge conceptions of what it means to be Indigenous, Black, queer, or female. Recent cancellations of theatre productions whose creators borrowed elements from minority cultures demonstrate the need for a distinction between political adaptation and cultural appropriation. Wright builds on Linda Hutcheon's definition of adaptation as repetition with difference and applies identification theory to illustrate how political adaptation at once underlines and undermines its canonical source. An exciting intervention in adaptation studies, Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre unsettles the dynamics of popular and political theatre and rethinks the ways performance can contribute to how one country defines itself.
Political and Protest Theatre after 9/11: Patriotic Dissent (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Jenny SpencerThis collection documents and examines political and protest theatre produced between the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Obama’s election in 2008 by British and American artists responding to their own governments’ actions and policies during this time. The plays take up topics such as the ongoing wars on terror, Blair’s support of U.S. policies, the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and illegal detentions and torture at Abu Ghraib. The authors argue that engaged artists faced a radically different sociopolitical context for their work after 9/11 compared to earlier social protest movements and new forms of theatre, and different emotional strategies were necessary to meet the challenges. The subtitle Patriotic Dissent suggests the double stance of many artists-- influenced by patriotic expressions of national solidarity, yet critical of the ways that patriotic language was put to use against others. The articles represent a broad range of theatre: Broadway musicals, documentary theatre, adaptations of classical theatre, new plays by British playwrights, street performances and installations, and musical concerts. The contributors’ case studies evaluate the effectiveness of important instances of political theatre and protest from this decade, arguing for the significance, relevance, and continuing necessity for evolving forms of political theatre today.
Political Cyberformance: The Etheatre Project
by Christina PapagiannouliWritten from a practice-based perspective, this book focuses on the political character of 'cyberformance': the genre of digital performance that uses the Internet as a performance space. The Etheatre Project comprises a series of experimental cyberformances aiming to reconsider the characteristics of theatre in the Internet age.
Political Performance in Syria
by Edward ZiterPolitical Performance in Syria, charts the history of a theatre that has sought the expansion of civil society and imagined alternate political realities. In doing so, the manuscript situates the current use of performance and theatre by artists of the Syrian Revolution within a long history of political contestation.
Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theater
by Dia Da CostaScholars increasingly view the arts, creativity, and the creative economy as engines for regenerating global citizenship, renewing decayed local economies, and nurturing a new type of all-inclusive politics. Dia Da Costa delves into these ideas with a critical ethnography of two activist performance groups in India: the Communist-affiliated Jana Natya Manch, and Bhutan Theatre, a community-based group of the indigenous Chhara people. As Da Costa shows, commodification, heritage, and management discussions inevitably creep into performance. Yet the ability of performance to undermine such subtle invasions make street theater a crucial site for considering what counts as creativity in the cultural politics of creative economy. Da Costa explores the precarious lives, livelihoods, and ideologies at the intersection of heritage projects, planning discourse, and activist performance. By analyzing the creators, performers, and activists involved--individuals at the margins of creative economy as well as society--Da Costa builds a provocative argument. Their creative economy practices may survive, challenge, and even reinforce the economies of death, displacement, and divisiveness used by the urban poor to survive.
The Politics and Poetics of Camp
by Moe MeyerThe Politics and Poetics of Camp is a radical reappraisal of the meaning and discourse of camp. The contributors look at both the meaning and the uses of camp performance, and ask: is camp a style, or a witty but nonetheless powerful cultural critique? The essays investigate camp from its early formations in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to its present manifestations in queer theatre and literature. They also take a fascinating look at the complex relationship between queer discourse and decidedly un-queer pop culture appropriations on film and on the stage. The Politics and Poetics of Camp is an incisive, uncontainable and entertaining collection of essays by some of the foremost critics working in queer theory, from a number of disciplinary perspectives. This book makes a well-timed intervention into an emerging debate.
The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy
by Sean CarneyThe Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work.Carney's attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dramatizing the tragic.
The Politics and Reception of Rabindranath Tagore's Drama: The Bard on the Stage (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Arnab Bhattacharya Mala RenganathanThis is the first volume to focus specifically on Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adaptations of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. As Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Tagore’s highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape. Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encounters, romantic idealism, and universality. Tagore’s drama plays a generous host to experimentations with new performance modes, like the writing and staging of an all-women play on stage for the first time, or the use of cross-cultural styles such as Manipuri dance, Thai craft in stage design, or the Baul singing styles. This book is an exciting re-exploration of Tagore’s plays, visiting issues such as his contribution to Indian drama, drama and environment, feminist readings, postcolonial engagements, cross-cultural encounters, drama as performance, translational and adaptation modes, the non-translated or the non-translatable Tagore drama, Tagore drama in the 21st century, and Indian film. The volume serves as a wide-ranging and up-to-date resource on the criticism of Tagore drama, and will appeal to a range of Theatre and Performance scholars as well as those interested in Indian theatre, literature, and film.
Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830
by Sheryl KroenIn this book, Sheryl Kroen views post-revolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis.
Politics And Theatre In Twentieth-century Europe
by Margot MorganThis book explores the connection between politics and theatre by looking at the works and lives of Shaw, Brecht, Sartre, and Ionesco, providing a cultural history detailing the changing role of political theatre in twentieth-century Europe.