Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books

Book SynopsisWritten using critical theory, especially by Walter Benjamin, Blanchot and Derrida, Allegory and the Work of Melancholy: The Late Medieval and Shakespeare reads medieval and early modern texts, exploring allegory within texts, allegorical readings of texts, and melancholy in texts. Authors studied are Langland and Chaucer, Hoccleve, on his madness, Lydgate and Henryson. Shakespeare's first tetralogy, the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III conclude this investigation of death, mourning, madness and of complaint. Benjamin's writings on allegory inspire this linking, which also considers Dürer, Baldung and Holbein and the dance of the dead motifs. The study sees subjectivity created as obsessional, paranoid, and links melancholia, madness and allegorical creation, where parts of the subject are split off from each other, and speak as wholes. Allegory and melancholy are two modes – a state of writing and a state of being - where the subject fragments or disappears. These texts are aware of the power of death within writing, which makes them, fascinating. The book will appeal to readers of literature from the medieval to the Baroque, and to those interested in critical theory, and histories of visual culture.Trade Review”…an engaging and thoughtful study.” in: Anglia, Band 123, Heft 3, 2005Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Benjamin’s Trauerspiel Chapter 1: Triumphs of Allegory: Piers Plowman Chapter 2: The Knight Sets Forth: Chaucer, Chrétien and Dürer Chapter 3: Allegory and the Madness of the Text: Hoccleve’s Complaint Chapter 4: Collecting Princes: Reading Lydgate Chapter 5: The Testament of Cresseid: Reading Henryson with Baldung Chapter 6: Signs of the Apocalypse: Shakespeare’s Henry VI Conclusion: Richard III, Mourning and Memory Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisParadigms Found is an indispensable book for students and teachers of Shakespeare, and for anyone interested in the diverse ways in which his plays are read and taught at the start of the twenty-first century. It traces the paradigm shift in Shakespeare studies which, beginning in the 1970s, has foregrounded the playwright’s embeddedness in the material practices and ideological constructs of his time, and focussed on the conflicts, gaps and faultlines in early modern society. The book concentrates on feminism and new historicism as the two critical schools that have brought about significant changes in Shakespeare studies, and devotes a chapter to issues in early modern culture and drama highlighted by gay scholars. Topics covered include: contrasting views on the position of Renaissance women, material feminist criticism, Renaissance attacks and defences of women, the maternal body, boy actors, myths of homosexual desire, theatrical transvestism, the role of anecdotes in new historicist practice, self-fashioning, subversion, anxiety and wonder. In tracking the shifting interests of feminist, gay and new historicist critics, Paradigms Found demonstrates the explanatory power of the new approaches, discusses their limitations and places them in the context of developments in society and the academy.Trade Review”… the selection and organisation of feminist approaches to Shakespeare in the first half of the book are excellent, as is the author’s account of bibliography related to the boy actor in chapter four. […] Given the great complexity of the endeavour, the result is highly successful and the book should become essential reading…” in: Miscelánea: a Journal of English and American Studies 24 (2001): pp.165-168Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 1 Reading Shakespeare as Women 2 The Turn to History in Feminist Studies 3 Maternal Subtexts 4 Gay Interventions 5 Stephen Greenblatt: the Critic as Story-Teller 6 The Pastoral of Power 7 Social Energy and Renaissance Drama 8 The Contest of Paradigms Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn what sense did Shakespeare’s representation of the Weird Sisters participate in the rewriting of village witchcraft? Was it likely to “encourage the Sword”? Did opera’s specific medial conditions offer Verdi special opportunities to justify the presence of stage witches more than three centuries later? How valid is the parallel between 19th century opera and the voyeurism of madhouse spectacle? Was Shakespeare’s play really engaged in the project of exorcizing Queen Elizabeth’s cultural memory? What does Verdi’s chorus of Scottish refugees have to do with shifting representations of ‘the people’? These are among the questions tackled in this study. It provides the first in-depth comparison of Shakespeare’s and Verdi’s Macbeth that is written expressly from the perspective of current Shakespearean criticism whilst striving to do justice to the topic’s musicological dimension at the same time. Exploring to what extent the play’s matrix of possible readings is distinct from Verdi’s two operatic versions, the book seeks to relate such differences both to the historical contexts of the works’ geneses and to their respective medial conditions. In doing so, it pays particular attention to shifting negotiations of witchcraft, gender, madness, and kingship. The study eventually broadens its discussion to consider other Shakespearean plays and their operatic offshoots, reflecting on some possible relations between historical and medial difference.Trade Review”The book […] broadens our horizons, as it intends to, in a significant way.” in: Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, No. 3, 2007Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preliminaries Introduction 1. Paltering in multiple senses: witchcraft, gender, madness I 2. Fantastical creatures: witchcraft, gender, madness II 3. Restoration and its discontents 4. Shakespeare, opera, difference Works cited

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Book SynopsisAlors que le théâtre d’Albert Camus reçoit de plus en plus de considération de la part des universitaires, cet ouvrage se consacre à la meilleure pièce camusienne, Caligula. Il en propose une analyse structurelle, pour en faire ressortir toute la métathéâtralité, et définit les rapports complexes que celle-ci entretient avec la folie et le politique : il cerne ainsi dans leur interaction les motifs qui sont au cœur de l’œuvre. De plus, il établit des liens aussi riches que variés avec des textes historiographiques et des œuvres-phares de la littérature occidentale, qui préfigurent le personnage si puissant qu’est Caligula. En somme, il situe la pièce sur le triple plan d’une tradition philosophique et littéraire qui remonte à l’Antiquité, du renouveau théâtral qui marque le milieu du XXe siècle, et de la production de Camus dans son ensemble. Il intéressera étudiants et professeurs qui se penchent sur la littérature française du XXe siècle, aussi bien que sur d’autres littératures, puisque par le biais camusien, il traite de la tragédie grecque, de Shakespeare, de Melville, de Pirandello… Il s’adresse plus spécialement à ceux qui étudient le théâtre, que ce soit dans une perspective historique, thématique ou esthétique.Table of ContentsListe des sigles et des abréviations Introduction Chapitre premier : Caligula dans l’histoire Chapitre deuxième : Les ancêtres de Caligula dans la littérature occidentale Chapitre troisième : Caligula, le texte Chapitre quatrième : Caligula dans l’œuvre de Camus Conclusion Sources documentaires Index

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Book SynopsisThe thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play. The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting – from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy – but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play: as ultimate affirmation of the ‘self’ (the ‘Hamlet paradigm’), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Gerhard FISCHER & Bernhard GREINER: The Play within the Play: Scholarly Perspectives I. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF SELF-REFLECTION Bernhard GREINER: The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm Yifen BEUS: Self-Reflexivity in the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation Klaus R. SCHERPE: ‘Backstage Discourse’: Staging the Other in Ethnographic and Colonial Literature David ROBERTS: The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation Caroline SHEAFFER-JONES: Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks II. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND META-THEATRE Christian SINN: The Figure in the Carpet: Metadramatical Concepts in Jacob Bidermann’s Cenodoxus (1602) John GOLDER: Holding a Mirror up to Theatre: Baro, Gougenot, Scudéry and Corneille as Self-Referentialists in Paris, 1628-1635/36 Manfred JURGENSEN: Rehearsing the Endgame: Max Frisch’s Biography: A Play Barnard TURNER: Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real Thing (1982): New Frames and Old Ulrike LANDFESTER: The Invisible Fool: Botho Strauss’s Postmodern Metadrama and the History of Theatrical Reality Shimon LEVY: Queen of a Bathtub: Hanoch Levin’s Political, Aesthetic and Ethical Metatheatricality Gad KAYNAR: The Disguised and Distanced Real(ity) Play within the Fictitious Play in Israeli Stage-Drama Zahava CASPI: A Lacerated Culture, A Self-Reflective Theatre: The Case of Israeli Drama III. PERSPECTIVES ON THE WORLD: COMEDY, MELANCHOLY, THEATRUM MUNDI Frank ZIPFEL: ‘Very Tragical Mirth’: The Play within the Play as a Strategy for Interweaving Tragedy and Comedy Herbert HERZMANN: Play and Reality in Austrian Drama: The Figure of the Magister Ludi Helmut J. SCHNEIDER: Playing Tragedy: Detaching Tragedy from Itself in Classical Drama from Lessing to Büchner Gerhard FISCHER: Playwrights Playing with History: The Play within the Play and German Historical Drama (Büchner, Brecht, Weiss, Müller) Birgit HAAS: Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz’s Festung and Albert Ostermaier’s The Making of B-Movie IV. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF SOCIO-CULTURAL REFLECTION AND INTERCULTURAL APPROPRIATION Lada Cale FELDMAN: The Context Within: The Play within the Play between Theatre Anthropology, System Theory and Postcolonial Critique Maurice BLACKMAN : Intercultural Framing in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête Kyriaki FRANTZI: Re-Interpreting Shadow Material in an Ancient Greek Myth: Another Night: Medea V. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF INTERMEDIAL TRANSFORMATION Yvonne NOBLE: John Gay and the Frame Play Donald BEWLEY: Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude Theresia BIRKENHAUER: Theatrical Transformation, Media Superimposition and Scenic Reflection: Pictorial Qualities of Modern Theatre and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss Opera Ariadne auf Naxos Erika GREBER: Pushkin in Love, or: A (Screen)Play within the Play. The Cinematic Potential of Romantic-Ironic Narration in Eugene Onegin Alessandro ABBATE: The Text within the Text, the Screen within the Screen: Multi-Layered Representations in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet Ken WOODGATE: ‘Gotta Dance’ (in the Dark): Lars von Trier’s Critique of the Musical Genre Tim MEHIGAN: The Game of the Narrative: Kleist’s Fiction from a Game-Theoretical Perspective Alexander HONOLD: French Beans and Mashed Potatoes: Agonistic Play and Symbolic Acting in Gottfried Keller’s Prose Fiction Ulrike GARDE: Playing with the Apparatus: Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and Barrie Kosky’s Interpretation for the Melbourne International Arts Festival Notes on Contributors Index of Names

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Book SynopsisArthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the third volume in the Dialogue series, covers six major and controversial topics dealing with Miller’s classic play. The topics include feminism and the role of women in the drama, the American Dream, business and capitalism, the significance of technology, the legacy that Willy leaves to Biff, and Miller’s use of symbolism. The authors of the essays include prominent Arthur Miller scholars such as Terry Otten and the late Steven Centola as well as young, emerging scholars. Some of the essays, particularly the ones written by the emerging scholars, tend to employ literary theory while the ones by the established scholars tend to illustrate the strengths of traditional criticism by interpreting the text closely. It is fascinating to see how scholars at different stages of their academic careers approach a given topic from distinct perspectives and sometimes diverse methodologies. The essays offer insightful and provocative readings of Death of a Salesman in a collection that will prove quite useful to scholars and students of Miller’s most famous play.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface from the General Editor Essay Topics for Dialogue: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Eric J. STERLING: Introduction Terry OTTEN: Linda Loman: “Attention must be paid” L. Bailey MCDANIEL: Domestic Tragedies: The Feminist Dilemma in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Steven CENTOLA: Arthur Miller: Guardian of the Dream of America Michelle NASS: Refocusing America’s Dream Juan Ignacio GUIJARRO-GONZÁLEZ and Ramón ESPEJO: Capitalist America in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: A Re-consideration Linda URANGA: Willy Loman and the Legacy of Capitalism Paula Marantz COHEN: The Dynamo, the Salesman, and the Playwright Craig N. OWENS: Mystifying the Machine: Staged and Unstaged Technologies in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Michael J. MEYER: In His Father’s Image: Biff Loman’s Struggle with Inherited Traits in Death of a Salesman Deborah Cosier SOLOMON: The Emergence of Hope in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman Luc GILLEMAN: “A little boat looking for a harbor”: Sexual Symbolism in Arthur Millers’s Death of a Salesman Samantha BATTEN: Compensatory Symbolism in Miller’s Death of a Salesman About the authors Abstracts Index

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Book SynopsisÀ la base de cette étude se trouvent des questions très simples, mais tellement fondamentales qu’on oublie souvent de les poser. Pourquoi le théâtre français est-il tellement “français”, par exemple lorsqu’on met en scène un auteur comme Racine? Quelles constructions identitaires, quelles catégories idéologiques étayent cette pratique ? Et quels facteurs contextuels, à la fois politiques et sociaux, influencent, contestent, contaminent ces constructions ? Abordant à la fois des questions liées à l’histoire du théâtre et des problèmes qui touchent à l’analyse culturelle, Le mythe de l’authenticité analyse l’impact de certains facteurs contextuels sur le processus de canonisation et les modes de représentation d’une seule pièce canonique : Britannicus de Jean Racine (1669). Quel serait le lien entre le personnage de Néron et le roi de France ? Qu’aurait pensé Napoléon de l’interprétation de ce même personnage par son acteur favori Talma ? Quels facteurs furent à la base de l’interprétation psychosexuelle et puis psychanalytique (à la française) de cette pièce ? Et comment l’interprétation de Britannicus par André Antoine pourrait-elle être appelée queer ? Le mythe de l’authenticité démontre ainsi comment cette tragédie romaine fut, depuis sa création jusqu’à nos jours, déconstruite et reconstruite par des artistes aussi divers que Le Kain, Talma, Mounet-Sully, André Antoine, Michel Hermon, Antoine Vitez, Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman et bien d’autres.Table of ContentsPréface Introduction Première partie : Lectures et dramaturgies de Britannicus Chapitre I: Le mythe de l’authenticité Chapitre II: Dramaturgie de Britannicus Deuxième partie: Mise en place d’un système mythologique Chapitre III: 1669 : L’ (auto-)construction du mythe racinien poético-classique Chapitre IV: La construction du mythe historique au XVIIIe siècle: les interprétations de Lekain et de Talma Chapitre V: Mounet-Sully et la construction du mythe psychosexuel Troisième partie: Entre reconstruction et déconstruction Chapitre VI: Andre Antoine ou la deconstruction involontaire. la version queer de Britannicus Chapitre VII: Le Britannicus de Michel Hermon. deconstruction iconoclaste et construction du mythe psychosexuel Chapitre VIII: La déconstruction formelle l’étrangéification Vitézienne Chapitre IX: Brigitte Jaques-Wajeman : le retour à la lettre ou une nouvelle reconstruction du mythe racinien Conclusions Annexe: Régistre des spectacles analysés Bibliographie

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Book SynopsisStrindberg and the Quest for Sacred Theatre brings a fresh perspective to the study of Sweden’s great playwright. August Strindberg (1849-1912) anticipated most of the major developments in European theatre over the last century. As such he is well-placed to provide perspectives on the current burgeoning interest in sacred theatre. The religious crises of the 19th Century provoked in Strindberg both sharp scepticism about claims to religious authority and a visionary search for truth. Against the backdrop of a major change in European culture this book traces the emergence in some of Strindberg’s late plays of a proto-sacred-theatre. It argues that Strindberg faced the alternatives of a contentless transcendent abyss, threatening the extinction of his ego, or a retreat into conservative theism, reducing him to slavish submission to the commandments and rule of an external father-God. Weaving together theatrical, aesthetic, and theological voices, this book investigates the relationship of the sacred to subjectivity and its implications for Strindberg’s dramaturgy. In doing so it always keeps in view the sense both of loss and opportunity engendered by a turning point in the western experience of the sacred.Table of ContentsA Note on Strindberg Texts Acknowledgments Introduction Salvation and Subversion in To Damascus Incarnation and Liberation in A Dream Play Illusion and the Void in four Chamber Plays The Reversal of Dante in The Great Highway Conclusion Appendix: Kierkegaard, Brand and Master Olof Bibliography Names Index

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Book SynopsisIn this volume an international cast of scholars explores conceptions of the self in the literature and culture of the Early Modern England. Drawing on theories of performativity and performance, some contributors revisit monological speech and the soliloquy - that quintessential solo performance - on the stage of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Other authors move beyond the theatre as they investigate solo performances in different cultural locations, from the public stage of the pillory to the mental stage of the writing self. All contributors analyse corporeality, speech, writing and even silence as interrelated modes of self-enactment, whether they read solo performances as a way of inventing, authorizing or even pathologizing the self, or as a mode of fashioning sovereignty. The contributions trace how the performers appropriate specific discourses, whether religious, medical or political, and how they negotiate hierarchies of gender, rank or cultural difference. The articles cut across a variety of genres including plays and masques, religious tracts, diaries and journals, poems and even signatures. The collection links research on the inward and self-reflexive dimension of solo-performances with studies foregrounding the public and interactive dimension of performative self-fashioning. The articles collected here offer new perspectives on Early Modern subjectivity and will be of interest to all scholars and students of the Early Modern period.Table of ContentsManfred Pfister: Foreword Ute Berns: Solo Performances — an Introduction Authoring and Authority Ina Schabert: The Theatre in the Head: Performances of the Self for the Self by the Self Andrew James Johnston: Subjectivity and the Ekphrastic Prerogative: Emilia’s Soliloquy in The Two Noble Kinsmen Richard Wilson: Our Good Will: Shakespeare’s Cameo Performance Werner von Koppenfels: Spiritual Self-Fashioning: John Lilburne at the Pillory Self-Inventions and Pathologies Jürgen Schlaeger: Auto-Dialogues: Performative Creation of Selves Günter Walch: The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Hamlet, of Denmark Maria Del Sapio Garbero: A Spider in the Eye/I: The Hallucinatory Staging of the Self in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale Rui Carvalho Homem: Of Idiocy, Moroseness, and Vitriol: Soloists of Rage in Ben Jonson’s Satire Wolfgang G. Müller: The Poem as Performance: Self-Definition and Self-Exhibition in John Donne’s Songs and Sonets Margret Fetzer: Plays of Self: Theatrical Performativity in Donne Fashioning Sovereignty Roger Lüdeke / Andreas Mahler: Stating the Sovereign Self: Polity, Policy, and Politics on the Early Modern Stage Jerzy Limon: The Monarch as the Solo Performer in Stuart Masque Ralf Hertel: Turkish Brags and Winning Words: Solo Performances in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Notes on Contributors

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Book SynopsisCentral to Samuel Beckett’s literature is a wilful voice which insists on speaking and being heard. Beckett described it as “a truly exterior voice”, and in the plays he separates voice from the body and turns it into an audible character. Previous critical studies have explored the enigma of this voice, its identity, source and location, but little attention has been given to the voice as protagonist. This volume traces the genesis of the performative voice in the early prose and charts its trajectory throughout the dramatic oeuvre in a readable narrative which generates fresh insights into some of Beckett’s most remarkable and impenetrable plays. It examines the use of embodied and acousmatic – ‘out of body’ – voices in the different media of theatre, radio and television; the treatment of voice in relation to music, image and movement; and the ‘shifting threshold’ between the written and spoken word. The analysis comprises a detailed study of dramatic speech and technical aspects of sound reproduction, making it relevant for all scholars and students with an interest in textual and performance issues in Beckett’s drama.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction I. A Voice Within and Beyond the Twentieth Century II. Genesis of the Performative Voice III. Re-enacting Voices from the Past Rewinding Memories: Krapp’s Last Tape Talking Ghosts: Embers The Voice Closes In: Eh Joe IV. Voice as Protagonist Voice and Music: Cascando Voice and Image: Not I Voice and Movement: Ghost Trio V. Voice from Page to Stage Script or Text? A Piece of Monologue Voice and Performative Text: Ohio Impromptu Transformation of Voice: Company Conclusion Bibliography Chronology Index

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays in English by scholars of international standing presents new insights into the contexts in which the fifteenth-century French mystères were created. It is centred upon the remarkable outburst of large-scale plays written for urban production and dealing with biblical and hagiological subjects which transformed the art of theatre in France and gave rise to a new and multi-faceted theatrical culture. Among the subjects treated are the means by which surviving texts preserve theatrical practice, and some of the ways in which the work of the principal dramatists Eustache Mercadé, Arnoul Gréban and Jean Michel interact with one another and with the work of others. The nature of some surviving texts is subjected to close scrutiny and this includes detailed work upon some manuscripts and their typology. Attention is also given to the related moralités, the convent drama, and to the large corpus of Catalan plays which deal with similar topics but in different circumstances. Further contexts are addressed through paradramatic aspects including sermons and the chansons de geste, as well as the political environment. One recurring feature is the nature and activities of ubiquitous and powerful evil characters and their theatrical and theological significance.Table of ContentsPeter Happé: Introduction Véronique Dominguez: Mystère, Farce, Moralité: A Reflection upon the Poetics of Drama in the Middle Ages, Based on Ms. BnF fr. 904, Passion de Semur (Fifteenth Century), and Some Other Burgundian Manuscripts Vicki L. Hamblin: The Theatricality of Pre- and Post-Performance French Mystery Play Texts Peter Happé: Michel Adapts Gréban: Some Aspects of the Passion Sequence Olivia Robinson: Chantilly, Musée Condé, Ms. 617: Mystères as Convent Drama Charlotte Steenbrugge: “Haro! Haro! Sus, dyablerie”: The Theatricality of Devils in Temptation Sequences Marla Carlson: Le Mystère de Saint Sébastien’s Villain: “No Cuckoo is a Sparrowhawk” Richard Hillman: La Pucelle and the Godons in the Mistère du Siège d’Orléans: Civic Pageant and Popular Tradition Alan Hindley: “Laisser l’Istoire …et Moralisier ung Petit”: Aspects of Allegory in the Mystères Jelle Koopmans: Turning a Chanson de Geste into a Mystery, or Non-Religious and Chivalric Mystery Plays Charles Mazouer: Sermons in the Passions of Mercadé, Gréban and Jehan Michel Francesc Massip and Lenke Kovács: A Typology of Catalan Play Manuscripts from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century Contributors

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Book SynopsisEtymologically speaking, the words “know” and “narrate” share a common ancestry. Making Sense in Shakespeare examines some of the ways in which this distant kinship comes into play in Shakespearean drama. The argument of the book is that at a time in European cultural history in which the problem of knowledge was a matter of intensifying philosophical concern, Shakespeare too was in his own way exploring the possibilities and shortcomings of the various interpretative models that can be applied to experience so as to make it intelligible. While modes of understanding based upon such notions as those of naturalistic causality or rational human agency are shown to be inadequate in Shakespeare’s plays, his characters often impart form and significance to their experience through what are essentially narrative means, projecting stories onto events in order to make sense of them and to direct their activity accordingly. Narrative thus plays a crucial role in the construction of meaning in Shakespeare’s plays, although at the same time, as the author emphasizes, his works are no less concerned to illustrate the perils inherent in the narrativizing strategies deployed by their protagonists which often render them self-defeating and even destructive in the end.Table of ContentsPreface Introduction The Cause of Thunder: Why Things Happen in Shakespeare “Patterned by that the poet here describes”: Literary Lives in Titus Andronicus Bringing Deformed Forth: Engendering Meaning in Much Ado About Nothing Causes Why and Wherefore: The Enigma of History in King Henry V “The reason of our Caesar’s death”: Mystifying Motive in Julius Caesar Snakes and Ladders: Killing Metaphors in Julius Caesar “A short tale to make”: Narrating Hamlet “After your way his tale pronounc’d”: The Appropriation of Story in Shakespeare A Sound of Thunder: The Shakespearean Cause Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis book is an interdisciplinary work that weaves literary interpretation, legal theory, and philosophical doctrine about sex and love into a coherent mosaic in the context of two of Shakespeare’s plays: The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. In the process, the work advances literary interpretations of the plays including character studies of some of the main protagonists. The aim is partly theoretical but mostly practical: to demonstrate what we can learn about living a robustly meaningful and significant human life by taking Shakespeare’s work seriously from contemporary philosophical and legal vantage points. Shakespeare does not reveal a tightly defined moral system that he is trying to urge upon his audience. Instead, Shakespeare challenges his audience to struggle with moral complexity as they confront conflicting elements surrounding legal and moral issues presented in his work and within the souls of his characters. His issues and their conflicts are also ours. Much of Shakespeare’s work consists of raising weighty questions inextricably connected to the human condition and inviting his audience to ponder possible answers. The philosophical lessons about living our lives meaningfully and significantly that we can derive from Shakespeare are simple yet powerful.Table of ContentsEditorial Foreword by Leonidas Donskis Acknowledgments Introduction The Merchant of Venice: Tests of Our Humanity The Merchant of Venice: The Trial and Judicial Decision Making The Merchant of Venice: Bonds Repaired Measure For Measure: Law and Order Measure For Measure: Lust and Death Measure For Measure: Law and Marriage Notes Bibliography About the Author Index

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Book SynopsisThis analysis of twenty published texts by David Hare employs definitions from contemporary semiotic literary theory as a means of describing typologies of political drama. By tracing the incorporation of stylistic devices from agitational propaganda (caricature, self-referentiality, the frisson between oral and visual signification) throughout the typologies, the study illustrates how each text subverts audience expectation based on established dramatic genres. The collection of texts is seen as inherently self-referential and politically subversive. At the centre of each typology is a protagonist who functions as a martyr to or parodic emblem of contemporary society. Consistently, the hermeticism of public institutions which represent the political status quo makes them immune from any form of individual protest from the Left or Right. In the satirical anatomy, the emblem of political dissent is coopted by involvement within the institution, or the stage is dominated by a conservative who controls the action. In the demythology, private individuals are seen as incapable of altering the public frame of history; but here private suffering subverts the collective mythology of the historical construct. In the martyrology, the emblem of dissent is associated with a moral virtue which is inimical to contemporary society, the audience's expectation of the triumph of the individual being subverted when he/she is expelled from the onstage world on the grounds of political ideology. It is only in the final typology, the conversion, that a conservative emblem is seen as directly influenced by such martyrdom, and the audience is provided with an actual example of political change. Thus, the study describes how each typology builds on the construction of the previous, and all generate from agitational propaganda.

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Book SynopsisMost of the essays in Ritual Remembering: History, Myth and Politics in Anglo-Irish Drama, in part or in whole, frequently allude or directly concern themselves with the dramatic representation of the opposition or the collusion of myth and history, and the uses and abuses of both. Equally they celebrate and critically analyse the politics of the social conscience and social consciousness which pervades Irish drama in its rituals of forgetfulness and memory. Perhaps myth is above all to be understood as the conscience and consciousness of history; and politics is the projection of that myth into present social action - on the hustings (nowadays more frequently the television hustings), at the ballot box, in writing and on the stage. Most of the articles in this volume revolve around these gravely portentous and ambivalent themes, which nobody who is as much concerned with Anglo-Irish relations as with Anglo-Irish literature can disregard or evade.Table of ContentsC.C. BARFOOT: By Way of an Introduction: The Case of Saint Joan. Stanley WEINTRAUB: Jesting and Governing: Shaw and Churchill. Rodelle WEINTRAUB: Votes for Women: Bernard Shaw and the Women's Suffrage Movement. Maureen S.G. HAWKINS: Playing Both Ends Against the Middle: Boucicault's Political Positions in Robert Emmet. Bernard McKENNA: Playing the Seachran as the Shaughraun: Dion Boucicault and Representations of the Irish and Anglo-Irish. Michiko WAKAMATSU: All Our Moments Are Divine: Synge's Harsh Comedy The Tinker's Wedding. Bernice SCHRANK: The Politics of O'Casey's War Plays: Pacifism and Progress in The Silver Tassie and Oak Leaves and Lavender. Kinereth MEYER: The Politics of Performance in Sean O'Casey's Drama. Colbert KEARNEY: The Voice of the Man in The Plough and the Stars. Robert COCHRAN: There You Are Again: The Minimal Politics of Samuel Beckett. Ulf DANTANUS: Brian Friels Histories. Patrick BURKE: Brian's Friel's Worst Play and the Condition of Ireland Question. Munira HAMUD MUTRAN: The Two Mirrors of Brian Friel in The Mundy Scheme and Dancing at Lughnasa. Mária Kurdi: We All Have Our Codes. We All Have Our Masks: Language and Politics in Brian Friel's Stage Version of Fathers and Sons. Mitchell W. Harris: An Ersatz Ministry of Culture: The Political Cultural Function of the Field Day Theatre Company. Lionel PILKINGTON: The Superior Game: Colonialism and the Stereotype in Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark. Kathleen A. QUINN: Re-visioning the Goddess: Drama, Women, and Empowerment. Shaun RICHARDS: In the Border Country: Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Irish Drama. Notes on Contributors.

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Book SynopsisThe acclaimed Pelican Shakespeare series, now repackaged in award-winning modern covers to inspire Shakespearians of all ages.

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