Literary studies: plays and playwrights Books
Bucknell University Press,U.S. Space, Drama, and Empire: Mapping the Past in
Book SynopsisSpanish poet, playwright, and novelist Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was a key figure of Golden Age Spanish literature, second only in stature to Cervantes, and is considered the founder of Spain’s classical theater. In this rich and informative study, Javier Lorenzo investigates the symbolic use of space in Lope’s drama and its function as an ideological tool to promote an imagined Spanish national past. In specific plays, this book argues, historical landscapes and settings were used to foretell and legitimize the imperial present in Hapsburg Spain, allowing audiences to visualize and plot, as on a map, the country’s expansionist trajectory throughout the centuries. By focusing on connections among space, drama, and empire, this book makes an important contribution to the study of literature and imperialism in early modern Spain and equally to our understanding of the role and political significance of spatiality in Siglo de Oro comedia.Trade Review“A fascinating and original study of space showing how theater has the unique potential to function as the ultimate vehicle to explore and, more importantly, complicate matters of our past.”— Esther Fernández, author of To Embody the Marvelous: The Making of Illusions in Early Modern Spain “Lorenzo offers a wealth of insights to better understand a corpus of plays that Lope de Vega devised from the heights of artistic sophistication and popular acclaim. Lorenzo’s vivid, clear analysis retraces Lope’s steps as he reworks chronicles, myths, and maps depicting Iberia’s patchwork medieval realms for his own times, with a keen eye and well-tuned ear on the imperatives of Spain’s diverse, far-flung empire. Space, Drama, and Empire is a boon for scholars and students alike.”— Elizabeth Wright, author of The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain “An eye-opening examination of Golden Age theater focusing on how Lope de Vegas’s plays use symbolic and ideological space, prefigure an imperial present (and future), and legitimize imperial expansion and territorial appropriation.”— Antonio Sánchez Jiménez, author of Lope: El verso y la vida “Lorenzo’s analysis of the representation of geographical space in Lope’s historical dramas provides compelling new insights concerning the reconfiguration of iconic episodes from Spain’s medieval past as imperial or proto-imperial episodes. Of particular interest is the way that Lorenzo identifies absolutist and imperialist undertones in plays that feature the peripheral provincial settings of Galicia, Asturias, and Las Canarias as prefigurations of early modern colonialism.”— Barbara Simerka, author of Knowing Subjects: Cognitive Cultural Studies and Early Modern Spanish LiteratureTable of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Translations Introduction Space and the Imperial Appropriation of the Past in the Lopian comedia “Que los reyes nunca están lejos”: Empire and Metatheatricality in El mejor alcalde, el rey Born to Expand: Space, Figura, and Empire in Las famosas asturianas Endangered from Within: Space and Difference in Las paces de los reyesy judía de Toledo Atlantic Conquests, Transatlantic Echoes: Space, Gender, and Dietetics in Los guanches de Tenerife y conquista de Canaria Conclusion Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
£107.20
Wilfrid Laurier University Press Reliving the Trenches: Memory Plays by Veterans
Book SynopsisIn Reliving the Trenches, three plays written by returned soldiers who served in the Great War with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium appear in print for the first time. With a critical introduction that references the author's service files to establish the plays as memoirs, these plays are an important addition to Canadian literature of the Great War.Important but overlooked war memoirs that relive trench life and warfare as experienced by combat veterans, the three plays include The P.B.I., written and staged in 1920 by recently returned veterans at the University of Toronto. Parts of this play appeared in print in serial form in 1922. Glory Hole, written in 1929 by William Stabler Atkinson, and Dawn in Heaven, written and staged in Winnipeg in 1934 by Simon Jauvoish, have never been published. These plays impact Canadian literature and theatre history by revealing a body of previously unknown modernist writing, and they impact life writing studies by showing how memoirs can be concealed behind genre conventions. They offer fascinating details of the daily routines of the soldiers in the trenches by bringing them back to life in theatrical re-enactment.Table of Contents 1. Critical and Historical Introduction 2. Editorial Principles 3. Introduction to The P.B.I. 5. The P. B. I., or, Mademoiselle of Bully Grenay by H. B. Scudamore, H.W. Downie W.L. McGeary and H.R. Dillon 6. Introduction to Glory Hole 7. Glory Hole: A Play of 1914-18 by William Stabler Atkinson 8. Introduction to Dawn In Heaven 9. Dawn In Heaven by Simon Jauvoish Appendix One: The P.B.I. Program Appendix Two: War Service of The P.B.I. Authors and Cast Appendix Three: 'A Canadian Volunteer's Last Prayer,' a poem by Simon Jauvoish Works Cited
£69.30
Wits University Press Mooi Street and Other Moves
Book SynopsisThis collection of six plays by one of South Africa’s leading playwrights and actors features works written between 1984 and 1993. Slabolepszy is a master of dialogue, capturing the essence of the personality and speech patterns of his protagonists in language that is often dramatic, frequently funny, sometimes tragic and always entertaining.The works included are Under the Oaks, Over the Hill, Boo to the Moon, Smallholding, Mooi Street Moves and The Return of Elvis du Pisanie.Elvis won Slabolespzy the 1992/93 IGI Life Vita Award for Play of the Year and, together with Mooi Street Moves, gained him the Vita Playwright of the Year award.This collection is introduced by Robert Greig, a well-known theatre critic, and by Bobby Heaney, who has been involved in the evolution of several of Slabolepszy’s plays.Table of ContentsGlossary Introduction - Robert Greig Bringing Page to Stage – Bobby Heaney Under the Oaks Over the Hill Boo to the Moon Smallholding Mooi Street Moves The Return of Elvis du Pisanie
£23.42
Liverpool University Press The Granny and the Heist / La estanquera de
Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189
£109.50
Liverpool University Press The Granny and the Heist / La estanquera de
Book SynopsisPart comedy, part thriller, part social critique, The Granny and the Heist (La estanquera de Vallecas) is the play with which José Luis Alonso de Santos reinvigorated the Spanish stage during a period of uncertainty upon the death of Francisco Franco and the end of theatre censorship. Premiered in 1981, it established Alonso de Santos as the most important playwright in Spain at a time when the country was emerging from decades of relative isolation from the rest of Europe.Set in a working class area of Madrid, the play tells the story of Leandro and Tocho, two out of work builders whose plan to rob a tobacconists goes awry due to the refusal of its owner, feisty grandmother Justa, to hand over the money. Barricading themselves in the shop as the forces of order arrive, the men take Justa and her granddaughter Ángeles hostage. In the stand-off that ensues, Alonso de Santos deftly interweaves tense excitement, comic banter and moments of great tenderness, eliciting our sympathy for the residents of the Vallecas neighbourhood, equally ignored by Spain’s nascent democracy as they had been under the dictatorship.This edition features Stuart Green’s facing page translation, as well as a critical introduction that provides readers with knowledge of the historical and cultural context in which the play was written and performed. The edition also includes an extensive collection of classroom activities especially designed by Lucy Meyer and Stuart Green to enable secondary school and university teachers to use the play, its translation and other authentic materials to teach a variety of linguistic and grammatical features of Spanish in all four skills areas in language learning.Table of ContentsIntroduction There’s no-one quite like Grandma 1 Vallecas: from village to neighbourhood and on stage 2 Plot summary 5 Alonso de Santos and the theatre of his time: playwriting and politics 7 La estanquera de Vallecas: a blend of sainete and the picaresque 13 Characters 20 Premiere(s): critical and commercial reaction 28 Notes on the translation 32 Acknowledgements 35 Translator's Note 35 Bibliography 36 La estanquera de Vallecas / The Granny and the Heist 39 Teaching Resources Introduction 138 Addressing any concerns 139 Teaching and learning objectives 140 Skills activities 142 Speaking 142 Listening 151 Reading 153 Writing 155 Research project 159 Performance 160 Lesson sequence 163 Entrevista con Beatriz Bergamín / Interview with Beatriz Bergamín 166 Transcriptions of videoclips 172 Photographs from the 1985 stage production 176 Sample student work 178 Answers to questions 189
£29.48
Liverpool University Press Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and
Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex
£109.50
Reaktion Books Freedom from Violence and Lies: Anton Chekhov's
Book SynopsisAn enlightening, nuanced, and accessible introduction to the life and work of one of the greatest writers of short fiction in history. Anton Chekhov's stories and plays endure, far beyond the Russian context, as outstanding modern literary models. In a brief, remarkable life, Chekhov rose from lower-class, provincial roots to become a physician, leading writer, and philanthropist, all in the face of a progressive fatal disease. In this new biography, Michael C. Finke analyzes Chekhov's major stories, plays, and nonfiction in the context of his life, both fleshing out the key features of Chekhov's poetics of prose and drama and revealing key continuities across genres, as well as between his lesser-studied early writings and the later works. An excellent resource for readers new to Chekhov, this book also presents much original scholarship and is an accessible, comprehensive overview of one of the greatest modern dramatists and writers of short fiction in history.Trade Review“A crown achievement of his life-time engagement with Chekhov, Finke’s concise biography tells a compelling and comprehensive story of the Russian writer’s life and work. Written with surgical precision and creative sensitivity, this highly readable book pulsates with a multitude of insights into Chekhov as a person and an artist. Freedom from Violence and Lies will be a treasure for anyone interested in Russian literature and this great beloved writer.” -- Radislav Lapushin, Associate Professor of Russian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill“This valuable guide to the last great Russian writer of the nineteenth century achieves an exceptional balance between the life and the work. A wealth of biographical detail is harmoniously intertwined with rich analysis of Chekhov’s literary work, abounding with original and perspicacious interpretations. Chekhov’s life is studied in its two parallel streams—those of a writer’s career and of a medical professional. The latter further reveals competing lines of travail: as a practicing doctor, as a philanthropist, and as a student of the history and sociology of health care. The reader will enjoy a charming image of the writer, but also frequent, delicate reflections on the unique problems a scholar of Chekhov encounters, fascinating excavations into the deeper reaches of Chekhov’s work, and subtle commentaries on his poetics. An intellectual endeavor of considerable complexity, Finke’s book will have a distinguished place amidst the vast literature on Chekhov.” -- Savely Senderovich, Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature and Medieval Studies, Cornell University
£28.50
Liverpool University Press Terence: The Girl from Andros
Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex
£109.50
Liverpool University Press Terence: The Girl from Andros
Book SynopsisThe Girl from Andros was the first play of the brilliant but short-lived Roman comic playwright Terence and shows him as already a master dramatist. It is based on two plays (both now lost) by the Greek playwright Menander and was first put on in Rome in 166 BCE. The main focus of interest is the plotting and counter-plotting of a devious master and his equally devious slave, but there are also two boys both in danger of losing the girls they love, and a girl in search of the family from which she has long been separated – typical ingredients of a Latin comedy.The play is a theatrical tour de force with many comic highlights and is enlivened by a succession of metatheatrical remarks; but it also provokes thought on various aspects of human relationships in a male-dominated, slave-owning society that jealously guards its rights of citizenship. It was the first ancient Latin comedy to be performed in the Renaissance and influenced a number of plays in succeeding centuries, most notably Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722); it was also the inspiration for Thornton Wilder’s novel The Woman of Andros (1930). This volume includes the first detailed commentary on the play in any language for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewReviews ‘Dr Brown's book fills a real need, with a right-to-the-point introduction and commentary. His translation stays close to the Latin, but that does not keep it from being brilliant by moments'.Professor Benjamin Victor, University of Montreal'I am very happy to say that this Andria is an exemplary edition, invaluable for scholars, students and the Latin-inclined general reader alike. A fine work for us to remember Peter by.' Keith Maclennan, Classics for All'In preparing this last of his many contributions to the study of Terence, Brown was thus able to draw upon the full range of his knowledge, experience, and interests, and the result has all the virtues we might expect of him: clear and accurate discussion of the Latin text, a keen eye for details and nuances of interpretation, scrupulously evenhanded reporting and cogent analysis of past scholarly views, and a precise English rendering of the Latin original.' Sander Goldberg, Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionText and TranslationCommentaryBibliographyIndex
£31.81
Liverpool University Press The Emergence of a theatrical science of man in
Book SynopsisThe emergence of a theatrical science of man in France, 1660-1740 highlights a radical departure from discussions of dramatic literature and its undergirding rules to a new, relational discourse on the emotional power of theater. Through a diverse cast of religious theaterphobes, government officials, playwrights, art theorists and proto-philosophes, Connors shows the concerted effort in early Enlightenment France to use texts about theater to establish broader theories on emotion, on the enduring psychological and social ramifications of affective moments, and more generally, on human interaction, motivation, and social behavior. This fundamentally anthropological assessment of theater emerged in the works of anti-theatrical religious writers, who argued that emotional response was theater’s raison d’être and that it was an efficient venue to learn more about the depravity of human nature. A new generation of pro-theatrical writers shared the anti-theatricalists’ intense focus on the emotions of theater, but unlike religious theaterphobes, they did not view emotion as a conduit of sin or as a dangerous, uncontrollable process; but rather, as cognitive-affective moments of feeling and learning. Connors’ study explores this reassessment of the theatrical experience which empowered writers to use plays, critiques, and other cultural materials about the stage to establish a theatrical science of man—an early Enlightenment project with aims to study and ‘improve’ the emotional, social, and political ‘health’ of eighteenth-century France.Trade Review‘Informed by recent work in emotions history and affect theory, the book’s six engaging and original chapters show how this theatrical science repositioned early eighteenth-century spectators, not as hapless victims, but as active learners for whom the theatrical experience was a source of knowledge about the emotions… The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France makes a strong case for why cultural understandings of theatre as a social practice must also consider intellectual history as well as the dramatic texts that were performed. There are many fine-grained analyses of plays that convincingly illustrate the emotional dynamics described in the book… this book makes for fascinating, provocative reading.’ Annelle Curulla, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: theater, emotions, science of manDiderot’s relational dramaFrom religious theaterphobia to theatrical innovationAffect, intentionality, and the history of emotions Chapter 1: Theaterphobia and the transformational power of performanceAnti-theatrical criticism: goals and strategiesCorneille, Nicole, and the reality of emotionsLearning dangerously from the passions: Pierre Nicole’s Traité de la comédieDebating theatrical emotions in the wake of Nicole’s Traité Chapter 2: “Que sur la superficie de notre cœur”: Jean-Baptiste Dubos’s theatrical emotionsEmotional debates: past and presentA different path to aesthetic appreciationThe political case for pleasureDubos’s cognitive-affective sequences Chapter 3: Beyond affect: from Dubos’s “passions superficielles” to Houdar de La Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”La Motte, the Querelle, and the RegencyLa Motte’s “sentiments raisonnables”The dramaturgical power of intérêt Chapter 4: From the page to the stage: La Motte’s theatrical inquiry into the emotionsContext and emotion in Les Macchabées (1721)Intentionality and suspense in Romulus (1722)Inès de Castro (1723) and the emotional politics of intérêt Chapter 5: Strategic passions: Marivaux’s Moderne subjectivitiesMarivaux’s trajectory from Moderne to bel esprit to scientist of manLearning from the “organs”: Marivaux’s intuitive ethicsSentimental strategies: Marivaux’s theories of emotion in Le Triomphe de l’amour (1732) Chapter 6: Learning through multiplicité: emotion and distance in the comédie larmoyanteThe decline and rebirth of Nivelle de La Chaussée’s emotional poeticsMeaning-making through the romanesqueThe pièce-cadre: emotion, multiplicité, and spectatorship in La Fausse Antipathie (1733) Conclusion: avant-gardes, emotion, and Enlightenment Works citedIndex
£98.30
Liverpool University Press British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas
£53.17
Liverpool University Press Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and
Book SynopsisIn the middle years of the sixteenth century, English drama witnessed the emergence of the ‘tyrant by entrie’ or the usurper, who supplanted earlier ‘tyrant by the administration’ as the main antihero of political drama. This usurper or, in Machiavellian terms principe nuove, was the prince without dynastic claims who creates his sovereignty by dint of his own ‘virtù’ and through an act of ‘lawmaking’ violence. Early Tudor morality plays were exclusively concerned with the legitimate monarch who becomes a tyrant; in the political drama of the first half of the sixteenth century, we do not encounter a single instance of usurpation among the texts that are still available to us. In contrast, the historical and tragic plays of the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods teem with illegitimate monarchs. Almost all of Shakespeare’s history plays, at least four of his ten tragedies, and even a few of his comedies feature usurpation or potential usurpation of sovereign power as a crucial plot device. Why and how does usurpation emerge as a preoccupation in English theatre? What are the political, historical, legal, and dramaturgical transformations that influence and are influenced by this moment of emergence? As the first book-length study devoted exclusively to the study of usurpation and tyranny in sixteenth-century drama and politics, Tyranny and Usurpation: The New Prince and Lawmaking Violence will challenge existing disciplinary boundaries in order to engage with these critical questions.Trade ReviewReviews'Original scholarship of significant value to the academic study of the intersections between drama and politics in the early modern period; its strengths lie in its wide coverage of dramatic texts, from political moralities to Senecan tragedies, and from university dramas to histories of the commercial stage; its combination of these dramatic texts with the analysis of a variety of political materials; and its dual focus on the historical and political contexts of both England and Scotland.'Dr Clare Egan, Lancaster University'[A] perceptive study... [Majumder] examines a span of English and Scottish works, from John Skelton’s Magnificence, through David Lindsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis and George Buchanan’s literary and polemical work, to the Richard III plays of the late 1500s, identifying a crucial shift in the ways in which tyranny and its relationship to usurpation were represented.'Lucy Munro, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900Doyeeta Majumder [provides] a refreshing approach to what has become one of the most discussed topics in Shakespearean studies—that of the expression and negotiation of authority on the stage. [...] It is the final chapter that offers a truly original approach to the issues of tyranny and usurpation in its consideration of three versions of Richard III. [...] Majumder’s analysis takes into consideration the particular audiences and literary conceits employed in each play and offers nuanced and intelligent readings that expose the constant contestation and fluidity of supreme authority.'Ben Haworth, The Year's Work in English Studies Table of ContentsNote on Spellings and AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter One: The Kingly Vice: The Tyrant in Early Tudor DramaChapter Two: Sovereignty, Counsel, and Consent in Scotland: Ane Satyre of the Thrie EstaitisChapter Three: Artful Construction of the Political Realm: Buchanan and the Legitimacy of ResistanceChapter Four: Gorboduc: Absolutist Decision and the Two Bodies of the KingChapter Five: Tyranny Added to Usurpation: Richardus Tertius, The True Tragedy, and Richard IIIEpilogueBibliographyIndex
£31.86
Liverpool University Press Charles Macklin and the Theatres of London
Book SynopsisCharles Macklin (1699?–1797) was one of the most important figures in the eighteenth-century theatre. Born in Ireland, he began acting in London in around 1725 and gave his final performance in 1789 – no other actor can claim to have acted across seven decades of the century, from the reign of George I to the Regency Crisis of 1788. He is credited alongside Garrick with the development of the natural school of acting and gave a famous performance of Shylock that gave George II nightmares. As a dramatist, he wrote one of the great comic pieces of the mid-century (Love à la Mode, 1759), as well as the only play of the century to be twice refused a performance licence (The Man of the World, 1781). He opened an experimental coffeehouse in Covent Garden, he advocated energetically for actors’ rights and copyright reform for dramatists, and he successfully sued theatre rioters. In short, he had an astonishingly varied career. With essays by leading experts on eighteenth-century culture, this volume provides a sustained critical examination of his career, illuminating many aspects of eighteenth-century theatrical culture and of the European Enlightenment, and explores the scholarly benefit – and thrill – of restaging Macklin’s work in the twenty-first century.Trade Review‘With thirteen scholarly articles by established academics, this publication will without doubt restore Macklin to his rightful place as a towering personality of the London theatre world of the eighteenth century… [a] powerful academic panorama of Macklin’s work.’ Seán Beattie, Donegal Annual‘This collection will interest more than just fans of the Irish actor Charles Macklin. At stake in examining Macklin’s life and work is the fashioning of a more capacious understanding of the Enlightenment… meticulous research also unearths evidence that expands our view of Macklin’s impact on Georgian theatre.’ Kristina Straub, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research
£109.50
Liverpool University Press A Stage of Emancipation: Change and Progress at
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal
£29.91
Liverpool University Press The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights,
Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance.Volume One covers plays by Irish women playwrights written between 1716 to 1992, and seeks to address and redress the historic absence of Irish female playwrights in theatre histories. Highlighting the work of nine women playwrights from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as thirteen of the twentieth century’s key writers, the chapters in this volume explore such varied themes as the impact of space and place on identity, women’s strategic use of genre, and theatrical responses to shifts in Irish politics and culture.CONTRIBUTORS: Conrad Brunström, David Clare, Thomas Conway, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Shirley-Anne Godfrey, Úna Kealy, Sonja Lawrenson, Cathy Leeney, Marc Mac Lochlainn, Kate McCarthy, Fiona McDonagh, Deirdre McFeely, Megan W. Minogue, Ciara Moloney, Justine Nakase, Patricia O'Beirne, Kevin O'Connor, Ciara O'Dowd, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Anna Pilz, Emilie Pine, Ruud van den Beuken, Feargal WhelanTrade Review'Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.'Colleen English, The New Books Network'This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable. [....] All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.'María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaisesTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine Nakase“There’s no Place like old England”: Space and Identity in Mary Davys’s The Northern Heiress; Or, the Humours of York (1716)Marguérite Corporaal“Some tender scenes demand the melting tear”: Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery (1763) and the Vindication of “Sentimental Comedy”Conrad BrunströmIrish Wit on the London Stage: Elizabeth Griffith’s The Platonic Wife (1765)Clíona Ó GallchoirDeceptive Disabilities in Maria Edgeworth’s The Double Disguise (1786): Irish Patriotism, Consumption, and the Martial Male BodySonja LawrensonReimagining Maria Edgeworth’s The Knapsack (1801) for a Contemporary Young AudienceFiona McDonagh & Marc Mac LochlainnMary Balfour’s Kathleen O’Neil (1814): An Expression or Betrayal of Her Ulster Scots Background?David ClareJustice and the “Triple Goddess” Archetypes in Anna Maria Hall’s Mabel’s Curse (1837)Ciara MoloneyOperas without a Hero: A Comic Trilogy (1876–1879) by Elena Norton and Mary HeyneMark Fitzgerald“Petticoats!—petticoats! petticoats!”: Sartorial Economics in Clotilde Graves’s A Mother of Three (1896)Justine NakaseFrom Gort to Antarctica: Lady Gregory’s Audiences and The Rising of the Moon (1903)Anna PilzLady Gregory’s Grania (1912): Myth and MythologyShirley-Anne Godfrey“You have let the play go to pieces”: Geraldine Cummins and Susanne R. Day’s Fox and Geese (1917) and the Hegemony of the Early Abbey TheatreThomas Conway“Something left over from the Eighteenth Century, undergoing a slow process of decay”: The Impotence of the Ascendancy in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–? (1931)Ruud van den BeukenShape Shifting the Silence: An Analysis of Talk Real Fine, Just Like a Lady (2017) by Amanda Coogan in Collaboration with Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, an Appropriation of Teresa Deevy’s The King of Spain’s Daughter (1935)Úna Kealy & Kate McCarthyThe Premiere Staging of Mount Prospect (1940) by Elizabeth Connor (the Pen Name of Una Troy) at the Abbey TheatreCiara O’DowdCorruption and Socio-Political Tensions in Christine Longford’s Tankardstown (1948)Kevin O’ConnorSocial Class, Space, and Containment in 1950s Ireland: Maura Laverty’s “Dublin Trilogy” (1951–1952)Cathy Leeney & Deirdre McFeelyMáiréad Ní Ghráda’s An Triail/On Trial (1964): Hiding Hypocrisy in Plain SightFeargal WhelanChristina Reid: Acts of Memory in Tea in a China Cup (1983), The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), and My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989)Emilie PineAnne Devlin: Depicting a Gendered Journey: Men and Women on The Long March (1984)Megan W. MinogueA Partial Eclipse: The Role of the Religious in Patricia Burke Brogan’s Eclipsed (1988 / 1992)Patricia O’BeirneCoda – What the Woman Sees: Waking Up to Feminist AestheticsCathy Leeney
£104.02
Liverpool University Press The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights,
Book SynopsisThis two-volume edited collection illuminates the valuable counter-canon of Irish women’s playwriting with forty-two essays written by leading and emerging Irish theatre scholars and practitioners. Covering three hundred years of Irish theatre history from 1716 to 2016, it is the most comprehensive study of plays written by Irish women to date. These short essays provide both a valuable introduction and innovative analysis of key playtexts, bringing renewed attention to scripts and writers that continue to be under-represented in theatre criticism and performance. Volume Two contains chapters focused on plays by sixteen Irish women playwrights produced between 1992 and 2016, highlighting the explosion of new work by contemporary writers. The plays in this volume explore women’s experiences at the intersections of class, sexuality, disability, and ethnicity, pushing at the boundaries of how we define not only Irish theatre, but Irish identity more broadly.CONTRIBUTORS: Nelson Barre, Mary Burke, David Clare, Shonagh Hill, Mária Kurdi, José Lanters, Fiona McDonagh, Dorothy Morrissey, Justine Nakase, Brian Ó Conchubhair, Brenda O'Connell, Shane O'Neill, Graham Price, Siobhán Purcell, Carole Quigley, Sarah Jane Scaife, Melissa Sihra, Clare WallaceTrade Review'In a word, The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights, 1716–2016... is superb. This two-volume collection showcases writers familiar and less familiar, offers valuable context and incisive textual readings, attends to performance as well as stagecraft, and ranges among historical periods and critical approaches.'Prof. Paige Reynolds, English Studies‘The Golden Thread is an ambitious, richly textured and multifaceted research piece that opens up the field of Irish theatre studies in most fruitful ways. It offers a robust counteracting to the under-representation of Irish women playwrights in the canon and is a strong incentive for producers to revive their work… a most valuable book for anyone interested in Irish studies, in Irish theatre studies and also for anyone interested in an alternative history of Irish theatre.’ Hélène Lecossois, Études irlandaises‘This is one of those indispensable works that will influence the future of performance studies and feminist criticism. The number and variety of voices on display, the effort in the reconstruction of the canon by adding women playwrights who had been erased in the past, and the declared ambition to draw attention to and create the conditions for revivals and publications of plays created by contemporary women playwrights make this extensive compilation more than recommendable... All in all, a very enjoyable edition, which makes for a rewarding read and provides essential information.’ María Gaviña-Costero, Estudios Irlandeses‘Spanning from the eighteenth-century to the present day, The Golden Thread brings together the work of leading scholars in Irish theatre and women’s writing with that of theatre practitioners to recover the often-hidden contributions of women playwrights. The collection develops a counter-canon of Irish playwrights that examines issues of class, sexuality, and disability.’ Colleen English, The New Books NetworkTable of ContentsIntroductionDavid Clare, Fiona McDonagh & Justine NakaseMarie Jones’s Don’t Look Down (1992): Representations of Disability for Young AudiencesFiona McDonaghLesbianism and Legibility in Emma Donoghue’s I Know My Own Heart (1993)Shonagh HillLearning to Play Poker: The Re-vision of Irish Women’s Agency in Gina Moxley’s Danti-Dan (1995)Nelson BarreDirecting Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats… (1998) in ChinaSarah Jane ScaifeUrsula Rani Sarma’s Blue (2000) and Social Transformation in IrelandShane O’NeillChallenging “Good Taste”: Roslaeen McDonagh’s The Baby Doll Project (2003) and the Creation of a “Traveller Canon”Mary BurkeDisordered States and Affective Economies in Stella Feehily’s O Go My Man (2006)Clare WallaceLiving in a Rape Culture: Gang Rape and “Toxic Masculinity” in Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006)Carole QuigleyMarina Carr’s Woman and Scarecrow (2006) and the Ars MoriendiJosé LantersLizzie Nunnery’s Intemperance (2007) and Compromised Mental Health among the Irish in BritainDavid ClareMemory, History, and Forgetting in Anne Devlin’s The Forgotten (2009)Graham Price“We are here, we were here all along”: Queer Invisibility and Performing Age in Amy Conroy’s I (Heart) Alice (Heart) I (2010)Brenda O’ConnellMotherhood and the Search for Recognition in Deirdre Kinahan’s Moment (2011)Dorothy Morrissey“Unrealing the Real”: Disability and Darwinism in Lynda Radley’s Futureproof (2011)Siobhán PurcellFamily Dysfunction and Character Dynamics: Nancy Harris’s Our New Girl (2012) in Conversation with Marina Carr’s Portia Coughlin (1996) and Martin Crimp’s The Country (2000)Mária KurdiUnconscious Casting: Stacey Gregg’s Shibboleth (2015), Walls, and the (En)Gendering of ViolenceJustine NakaseNevertheless, She Persisted: Celia de Fréine’s Luíse (2016)Brian Ó ConchubhairCoda – Spinning Gold: Threads of Augusta Gregory and Marina CarrMelissa Sihra
£109.50
Liverpool University Press A Stage of Emancipation: Change and Progress at
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the prominence of the recent #WakingTheFeminists movement illustrates, the Irish theatre world is highly conscious of the ways in which theatre can foster social emancipation. This volume of essays uncovers a wide range of marginalised histories by reflecting on the emancipatory role that the Dublin Gate Theatre (est. 1928) has played in Irish culture and society, both historically and in more recent times. The Gate’s founders, Hilton Edwards and Michéal mac Liammóir, promoted the work of many female playwrights and created an explicitly cosmopolitan stage on which repressive ideas about gender, sexuality, class and language were questioned. During Selina Cartmell’s current tenure as director, cultural diversity and social emancipation have also featured prominently on the Gate’s agenda, with various productions exploring issues of ethnicity in contemporary Ireland. The Gate thus offers a unique model for studying the ways in which cosmopolitan theatres, as cultural institutions, give expression to and engage with the complexities of identity and diversity in changing, globalised societies. CONTRIBUTORS: David Clare, Marguérite Corporaal, Mark Fitzgerald, Barry Houlihan, Radvan Markus, Deirdre McFeely, Justine Nakase, Siobhan O'Gorman, Mary Trotter, Grace Vroomen, Ian R. Walsh, Feargal WhelanTrade ReviewReviews‘The excellent essays in this collection add significantly to our knowledge of the Gate Theatre and its social and cultural practices and their contexts.’ Professor José Lanters, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee‘This rich stimulating collection revisions the work of Dublin’s Gate Theatre and celebrates how it posed radical challenges to Irish society’s social and cultural sore points and no-go-areas. Through a dazzling diversity of case studies in production, performance and theatrical practices the essays argue convincingly for the role of the Gate in confronting audiences with images and impacts that countered attitudes and assumptions about sexuality, gender, class divisions, racialization and Irish (including language) identity. While the Gate’s acknowledged theatrical aesthetics are not neglected, the book stresses the Gate Theatre’s achievement in juggling localism and cosmopolitanism with invigorating and engaging tension.’Dr Cathy Leeney, University College Dublin'A Stage of Emancipation is full of outstanding theatre scholarship from emerging and established voices. It provides fascinating insight into the role that the Dublin Gate Theatre has played in promoting social, economic, and cultural change within Irish society since the late 1920s. Most notably, it highlights the valiant efforts by key figures in the theatre’s history to bring marginalised stories and progressive attitudes to the Irish stage. This is an enormously valuable book for students, academics, and practitioners alike.'Dr Fiona McDonagh, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick'This collection makes room to breathe in Irish theatre – allowing us to inhale the extraordinary diversity of identities and artistry which were embodied on the Gate stage. Our eyes are opened once again to these forgotten legacies which challenge singular concepts of nation and society, transforming not only our understanding of the past but liberating our approach to theatre now.'- Dr Melissa Sihra, Trinity College DublinTable of Contents1. IntroductionMarguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den BeukenI: Liberating Bodies2. Queering the Irish Actress: The Gate Theatre Production of Children in Uniform (1934)Mary Trotter3. Maura Laverty at the Gate: Theatre as Social Commentary in 1950s IrelandDeirdre McFeelyII: Emancipating Communities4. ‘Let’s Be Gay, While We May’: Artistic Platforms and the Construction of Queer Communities in Mary Manning’s Youth’s the Season–?Grace Vroomen5. Images and Imperatives: Robert Collis’s Marrowbone Lane (1939) at the Gate as Theatre for Social ChangeIan R. WalshIII: Staging Minority Languages 6. Authenticity and Social Change on the Gate Stage in the 1970s: ‘Communicating with the People’Barry Houlihan7. Micheál mac Liammóir, the Irish Language and the Idea of FreedomRadvan MarkusIV: Deconstructing Aesthetics8. The Use of Minority Languages at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and Barcelona’s TeatreLliureFeargal Whelan and David Clare9. Mogu and the Unicorn: Frederick May’s Music for the Gate TheatreMark Fitzgerald10. Tartan Transpositions: Materialising Europe, Ireland and Scotland in the Designs of Molly MacEwenSiobhán O’GormanV: Contesting Traditions in Contemporary Theatre11. From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate TheatreJustine Nakase12. Bending the Plots: Selina Cartmell’s Gate and Politics of Gender InclusionMarguérite Corporaal
£57.13
Liverpool University Press British Women's Writing, 1930 to 1960: Between
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and through Knowledge Unlatched.This volume contributes to the vibrant, ongoing recuperative work on women’s writing by shedding new light on a group of authors commonly dismissed as middlebrow in their concerns and conservative in their styles and politics. The neologism ‘interfeminism’ – coined to partner Kristin Bluemel’s ‘intermodernism’ – locates this group chronologically and ideologically between two ‘waves’ of feminism, whilst also forging connections between the political and cultural monoliths that have traditionally overshadowed them. Drawing attention to the strengths of this ‘out-of-category’ writing in its own right, this volume also highlights how intersecting discourses of gender, class and society in the interwar and postwar periods pave the way for the bold reassessments of female subjectivity that characterise second and third wave feminism.The essays showcase the stylistic, cultural and political vitality of a substantial group of women authors of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and journalism including Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson, Nancy Mitford, Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Rumer Godden, Attia Hosain, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Susan Ertz, Marghanita Laski, Elizabeth Bowen, Edith Pargeter, Eileen Bigland, Nancy Spain, Vera Laughton Matthews, Pamela Hansford Johnson, Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Barbara Comyns, Shelagh Delaney, Stevie Smith and Penelope Mortimer. Additional exploration of the popular magazines Woman’s Weekly and Good Housekeeping and new material from the Vera Brittain archive add an innovative dimension to original readings of the literature of a transformative period of British social and cultural history.List of contributors: Natasha Periyan, Eleanor Reed, Maroula Joannou , Lola Serraf, Sue Kennedy, Ana Ashraf, Chris Hopkins, Gill Plain, Lucy Hall, Katherine Cooper, Nick Turner, Maria Elena Capitani, James Underwood, and Jane Thomas.Trade Review'This new collection of essays is a welcome addition to scholarship on twentieth-century women’s writing. [...] This is a recuperative project that insists on a dismissal of middlebrow from our critical lexicon in favour of an appreciation of ‘interfeminism’. Latent throughout are attempts to answer unspoken questions: did this period produce women’s writing that merits critical attention? And just how innovative was it? Where was its energy? Its revolt? Its exigency? Everywhere, this collection asserts, we just have to read it.'Lydia Fellgett, Women: A Cultural ReviewTable of ContentsIntroductionSue Kennedy and Jane ThomasPart I: Women Within and Beyond: Visions of ‘This Island’ 1930-19601. 'Pacifism , Fascism and The Crisis of Civilization’: Vera Brittain, Storm Jameson and Nancy Mitford in the 1930sNatasha Periyan2. Lower-Middle-Class Domestic Leisure in Woman’s Weekly, 1930 Eleanor Reed3. ‘Unsettled’ and ‘Unsettling’ Women: Migrant Voices After the WarMaroula Joannou Part II: Women Bearing Witness: The Temperature of War4. Supporting and Resisting the Myth of the Blitz: Ambiguity in Susan Ertz's Anger in the Sky (1943)Lola Serraf5. ‘The Lure of Pleasure’: Sex and the Married Girl in Marghanita Laski’s To Bed with Grand Music (1946)Sue Kennedy6. The Ambivalence of Testimony in The Heat of the Day (1949), Elizabeth BowenAna Ashraf7. Re-presenting Wrens: Nancy Spain's Thank you Nelson (1945), Eileen Bigland's The Story of the WRNS (1946), Vera Laughton Matthews' Blue Tapestry (1948) and Edith Pargeter's She Goes to War (1942) Chris HopkinsPart III: Women Writing Men: Interwar, War and Aftermath8. ‘We must feed the men’: Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Maternal Plotting. Too Dear For My Possessing (1940), An Avenue of Stone (1947) and A Summer to Decide (1948)Gill Plain9. Men of the House: Oppressive Husbands and Displaced Wives in Second World War and Post-War Literature (Dorothy Whipple, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier)Lucy Hall 10. British Women Writing War: The Case of Storm Jameson Katherine CooperPart IV: New Realities for Women: A Forward Glance11. Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s WritingNick Turner12. A New Reality: Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey (1958)Maria Elena Capitani13. Stevie Smith: Poetry and PersonalityJames Underwood14. ‘Whoever She Was’: Penelope Mortimer, Beyond the Feminine MystiqueJane Thomas
£34.99
Liverpool University Press The Plays of Maura Laverty: Liffey Lane, Tolka
Book SynopsisPublished here for the first time, Maura Laverty’s plays Liffey Lane, Tolka Row and A Tree in the Crescent are rooted in 1950s Dublin, its territories and enclaves. Teeming with the lives of the poor, the ambitious, the trapped and the struggling, the plays are moving, funny and vividly alive. They capture the capital in a state of transformation – reaching for modernisation while still enmired in stagnant class divisions, poor housing and narrow social values. Key to all three plays are questions of home, the lives of women and girls, and the impact of conservative government policies and church attitudes. Already a public figure in Irish life, and an influencer before her time through her fiction, cookery books and broadcasting, Laverty’s plays met with huge success when staged in 1951 and 1952 by Hilton Edwards of the Gate Theatre Company at Dublin’s Gaiety and Gate Theatres and on tour. Laverty’s trilogy is a significant and long-awaited part of the twentieth-century Irish theatrical canon. This volume presents the Trilogy, including a preface by Christopher Fitz-Simon, who knew and worked with Laverty. The editors’ introduction contextualises Laverty’s work and considers the theatrical values of the plays.Trade Review‘Maura Laverty bore vivid witness to newly independent Ireland in her journalism, broadcasting, cookery writing, novels for adults and children, and in the plays she wrote for the Gate Theatre in the 1950s. In publishing these three plays and providing valuable editorial commentary on them, Cathy Leeney and Deirdre McFeely have resurrected one brilliant writer’s perceptions of the problems, challenges, joys and sorrows of Dublin life in a decade of slow-burning social change.’ Caitriona Clear, Senior Lecturer in Modern Irish and European History, University of Galway‘Maura Laverty’s Dublin Trilogy was hugely popular when it premiered in Ireland in the 1950s. This landmark publication explains why, making these important plays available to a new generation of readers and theatre producers – while also providing a fascinating and comprehensive introductory essay that places these works in their social and theatrical contexts. The book’s overall impact is to retrieve the work of a writer who was celebrated in her own time, and who deserves to be better known in the present.’ Patrick Lonergan, Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Galway‘The trilogy is a significant and long-awaited part of the Irish theatrical canon.’ Books IrelandTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Maura Laverty’s Dublin TrilogyLiffey LaneTolka RowA Tree in the CrescentBibliography and Further Reading
£104.50
Liverpool University Press The Valiant Black Man in Flanders / El valiente
Book SynopsisA play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.Table of ContentsIntroductionEl valiente negro en Flandes / The Valiant Black Man in FlandersFootnotesCritical EssaysBibliographyIllustrationsCritical ApparatusAppendices
£110.00
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd William Shakespeare and 21st-Century Culture,
Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare and 21st-Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership examines problems, challenges, and crises in our contemporary world through the lens of William Shakespeare's plays, one of the best-known, most admired, and often controversial authors of the last half-millennium. As perhaps the most oft-cited author in the West outside of the Judeo-Christian Bible, Shakespeare has often been considered a sage, providing manifold insights into our shared human qualities and experiences across time and geography. The editors and authors of this accessible book leverage the now global scope of that sibylline reputation to explore what the Bard might tell us about ourselves, our politics, our leaders, and our societies today.The chapters are written with critical rigor and will appeal to scholars and students in leadership and literary studies but are accessible to non-Shakespeare experts. Anyone looking to explore the ongoing relevance of Shakespeare's work will find this volume enlightening and entertaining.Trade Review'Shakespeare Behind Bars was founded to assist the incarcerated in finding their authentic voices through an immersive experience in Shakespeare's original language, complex themes, and multiple meanings. I find myself today, happily aided in this process by writers in this collection from a rich variety of backgrounds who find truth in historical Shakespeare.' -- Curt L. Tofteland, Founder, Shakespeare Behind Bars'This wide-ranging volume marks an exciting moment in the study of leadership and literature alike. Truly interdisciplinary in their approach, informed by rigorous scholarship, and engagingly written, the book’s chapters help to broaden and deepen our understanding of Shakespeare's continuing--in some ways even increasing--resonance with problems of politics, power, and leadership in our world today.' -- Nicholas Warner, Claremont McKenna College, US'Timely studies of a timeless author: from #metoo to racial justice to Donald Trump, this brilliant collection, edited by two leading scholars of leadership and literature, highlights the resonances between contemporary political issues and Shakespeare's complex explorations of authority, civic participation, leadership, autocracy--and human identity itself.' -- Michael Harvey, Provost, Washington College, USTable of ContentsContents: Introduction: “I that please some, try all”: Shakespeare this time 1 Anthony Presti Russell and Kristin M. S. Bezio PART I PERFORMANCE 1 Performance and the political subject in Richard II 11 Melissa Caldwell 2 “Liars and swearers”: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the dissemblance of modern autocrats 30 Ryan Farrar 3 Learning about leadership from Coriolanus and Coriolanus 51 Peter Iver Kaufman PART II TRUTH 4 “Lies like truth”: Macbeth and the American Dream 67 Anthony Presti Russell 5 When it is wise to play the fool: a lesson in servant leadership, courtesy of King Lear 90 Katey Roden 6 Post-truth and pre-truth: how rhetoric shapes reality in Boyle’s Certain Physiological Essays , Shakespeare’s Othello , and the language of Donald Trump 109 Samantha Dressel PART III RESISTANCE 7 Much ado about me too: the personal and political activism of Shakespeare’s women 131 Jess Landis 8 Importance of highlighting the rotten state: a study of Vishal Bharadwaj’s Haider (2014) and its subversive strategies 149 Debaditya Mukhopadhyay 9 The Shakespeare Company Japan and regional self-fashioning 164 Tetsuhito Motoyama and Fumiaki Konno PART IV FREEDOM 10 “Mountainish inhumanity”: the politics of religion, refugees, and ego from Sir Thomas More to Donald Trump 183 Kristin M. S. Bezio 11 Twelfth Night and gender fluidity 202 Maria Carrig 12 Shakespeare in other tongues: translation and adaptation into Yoruba and Hausa in text, film, and stage productions in Nigeria 218 Kayode Gboyega Kofoworola Epilogue and post-script: the art of the De’ill, followed by a discussion between “M” and the editors 236 Raphael Seligmann Index
£104.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXII: Corporate
Book SynopsisEssays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on its relationship with business and finance. In the wake of the many passionate responses to its predecessor, Studies in Medievalism 22 also addresses the role of corporations in medievalism. Amid the three opening essays, Amy S. Kaufman examines how three modern novelists have refracted contemporary corporate culture through an imagined and highly dystopic Middle Ages. On either side of that paper, Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz explore how the Woolworth Company and Google have variously promoted, distorted, appropriated, resisted, and repudiated post-medieval interpretations of the Middle Ages. And Clare Simmons expands on that approach in a full-length article on the Lord Mayor's Show in London. Readers are then invited to find other permutations of corporate influence in six articles on the gendering of Percy's Reliques, the Romantic Pre-Reformation in Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, renovation and resurrection in M.R. James's "Episode of Cathedral History", salvation in the Commedia references of Rodin's Gates of Hell, film theory and the relationship of the Sister Arts to the cinematic Beowulf, and American containment culture in medievalist comic-books. While offering close, thorough studies of traditional media and materials, the volume directly engages timely concerns about the motives and methods behind this field and many others inacademia. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Aida Audeh, Elizabeth Emery, Katie Garner, Nickolas Haydock, Amy S. Kaufman, Peter W. Lee, Patrick J. Murphy, Fred Porcheddu, Clare A. Simmons, Mark B. Spencer, Richard Utz.Table of ContentsEditorial Note - The Corporate Gothic in New York's Woolworth Building: Medieval Branding in the Original "Cathedral of Commerce" - Elizabeth Emery Our Future is Our Past: Corporate Medievalism in Dystopian Fiction - Amy S. Kaufman The Good Corporation? Google's Medievalism and Why It Matters - Richard Utz "Longest, oldest, and most popular": Medievalism in the Lord Mayor's Show - Clare A Simmons Gendering Percy's Reliques: Ancient Ballads and the Making of Women's Arthurian Writing - Katie Garner Romancing the Pre-Reformation: Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth - Mark B. Spencer Renovation and Resurrection in M. R. James's "Episode of CathedralHistory" - Patrick J. Murphy and Fred Porcheddu Rodin's Gates of Hell and Dante's Inferno 7: Fortune, the Avaricious and Prodigal, and the Question of Salvation - Aida Audeh Film Theory, the Sister Arts Tradition, and the Cinematic Beowulf - Nickolas Haydock Red Days, Black Knights: Medieval-themed Comic Books in American Containment Culture - Peter W. Lee
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXIII: Ethics and
Book SynopsisEssays on the modern reception of the Middle Ages, built round the central theme of the ethics of medievalism. Ethics in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages form the main focus of this volume. The six opening essays tackle such issues as the legitimacy of reinventing medieval customs and ideas, at what point the production and enjoyment of caricaturizing the Middle Ages become inappropriate, how medievalists treat disadvantaged communities, and the tension between political action and ethics in medievalism. The eight subsequent articles then build on this foundation as they concentrate on capitalist motives for melding superficially incompatible narratives in medievalist video games, Dan Brown's use of Dante's Inferno to promote a positivist, transhumanist agenda, disjuncturesfrom medieval literature to medievalist film in portrayals of human sacrifice, the influence of Beowulf on horror films and vice versa, portrayals of war in Beowulf films, socialism in William Morris's translation of Beowulf, bias in Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, and a medieval source for death in the Harry Potter novels. The volume as a whole invites and informs a much larger discussion on such vital issues as the ethical choices medievalists make, the implications of those choices for their makers, and the impact of those choices on the world around us. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Mary R. Bowman, Harry Brown, Louise D'Arcens, Alison Gulley, Nickolas Haydock, Lisa Hicks, Lesley E. Jacobs, Michael R. Kightley, Phillip Lindley, Pascal J. Massie, Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberley, Kevin Moberley, Daniel-Raymond Nadon, Jason Pitruzello, Nancy M. Resh, Carol L. Robinson, Christopher Roman, M.J. Toswell.Table of ContentsEditorial Note The Dangers of the Search for Authenticity?: The Ethics of Hallowe'en - M J Toswell Living Memory and the Long Dead: The Ethics of Laughing at the Middle Ages - Louise D'Arcens Justice Human and Divine: Ethics in Margaret Frazer's Medievalist Dame Frevisse Series - Lisa Hicks Justice Human and Divine: Ethics in Margaret Frazer's Medievalist Dame Frevisse Series - Lesley E. Jacobs The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Daniel-Raymond Nadon The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Nancy M. Resh The Song Remains the Same: Crossing Intersections to Create an Ethical World via an Adaptation of Everyman for Everyone - Carol L. Robinson Bringing Elsewhere Home: A Song of Ice and Fire's Ethics of Disability - Pascal J. Massie and Lauryn S. Mayer The Ethical Movement of Daenerys Targaryen - Christopher Roman What if the Giants Returned to Albion for Vengeance?: Crusade and the Mythic Other in the Knights of the Nine Expansion to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Jason Pitruzzello The Dark Ages of the Mind: Eugenics, Amnesia, and Historiography in Dan Brown's Inferno - Brent Moberly The Dark Ages of the Mind: Eugenics, Amnesia, and Historiography in Dan Brown's Inferno - Kevin Moberly Plastic Pagans: Viking Human Sacrifice in Film and Television - Harry Brown Meat Puzzles: Beowulf and Horror Film - Nickolas Haydock Words, Swords, and Truth: Competing Visions of Heroism in Beowulf on Screen - Mary R. Bowman Socialism and Translation: The Folks of William Morris's Beowulf - Michael R. Kightley "We Wol Sleen this False Traytor Deeth": The Search for Immortality in Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale and J. K. Rowling's The Deathly Hallows - Alison Gulley Intention or Accident? Charles Alfred Stothard's Monumental Effigies of Great Britain - Philip G Lindley
£76.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXV: Medievalism and
Book SynopsisEssays examining the complex intertwining and effect of medievalism on modernity - and vice versa. The question of how modernity has influenced medievalism and how medievalism has influenced modernity is the theme of this volume. The opening essays examine the 2001 film Just Visiting's comments on modern anxieties via medievalism; conflations of modernity with both medievalism and the Middle Ages in rewriting sources; the emergence of modernity amid the post-World War I movement The Most Noble Order of Crusaders; António Sardinha's promotion of medievalism as an antidote to modernity; and Mercedes Rubio's medievalism in her feminist commentary on modernity. The eight subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing remnants of medieval London amid its moderndescendant; Michel Houellebecq's critique of medievalism through his 2011 novel La Carte et le territoire; historical authenticity in Michael Morrow's approach to performing medieval music; contemporary concerns in Ford Madox Brown and David Gentleman's murals; medieval Chester in Catherine A.M. Clarke and Nayan Kulkarni's Hryre (2012); medieval influences on the formation of and debate about modern moral panics; medievalist considerations inmodern repurposings of medieval anchorholds; and medieval sources for Paddy Molloy's Here Be Dragons (2013). The articles thus test the essays' methods and conclusions, even as the essays offer fresh perspectives on the articles. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Edward Breen, Katherine A. Brown, Catherine A.M. Clarke, Louise D'Arcens, Joshua Davies, John LanceGriffith, Mike Horswell, Pedro Martins, Paddy Molloy, Lisa Nalbone, Sarah Salih, Michelle M. Sauer, James L. SmithTrade ReviewIt does stimulate excitingly wide boundaries for future thought, discussion, and exploration. * PARERGON *Table of ContentsEditorial Note Medievalism at the End of History: Pessimism and Renewal in Just Visiting - John Lance Griffith Medieval Restoration and Modern Creativity - Katherine A. Brown Crusader Medievalism and Modernity in Britain: The Most Noble Order of Crusaders and the Rupture of the First World War, 1921-49 - Michael John Horswell From the Republica Christiana to the "Great Revolution": Middle Ages and Modernity in António Sardinha's Writings [1914-25] - Pedro Alexandre G. Martins Moving through Time and Space in Mercedes Rubio's Las siete muchachas del Liceo [1957] via Wagner's Parsifal in Barcelona, Spain [1914] - Lisa Nalbone Introduction to Part II In/visible Medieval/isms - Sarah Salih Art, Heritage Industries, and the Legacy of William Morris in Michel Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory - Louise D'Arcens Travel in Space, Travel in Time: Michael Morrow's Approach to Performing Medieval Music in the 1960s - Edward George Breen Imagining Medieval Chester: Practice-based Medievalism, Scholarship, and Creativity - Catherine A M Clarke The Anachronic Middle Ages: Public Art, Cultural Memory, and the Medievalist Imagination - Joshua Davies Medievalisms of Moral Panic: Borrowing the Past to Frame Fear in the Present - James L. Smith Extra-Temporal Place Attachment and Adaptive Reuse: The Afterlives of Medieval English Anchorholds - Michelle M. Sauer Here be Dragons: Mapping Space and Time, Medieval and Modern - Paddy Molloy Contributors
£71.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Studies in Medievalism XXVI: Ecomedievalism
Book SynopsisEssays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages, with a particular concentration on environmental matters. Ecoconcerns and ecocriticism are a rising trend in medievalism studies, and form a major focus of this collection. Topics under discussion in the first part of the volume include figurations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century medievalism; environmental medievalism in Sidney Lanier's Southern chivalry; nostalgia and loss in T.H. White's "forest sauvage"; and green medievalism in J.R.R. Tolkien's elven realms. The eleven subsequent articles continue to take in such themes more tangentially, testing and buillding on the methods and conclusions of the first part. Their subjects include John Aubrey's Middle Ages; medieval charter-horns in early modern England; nineteenth-centuryreimaginings of Chaucer's Griselda; Dante's influence on Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream"; multi-layered medievalisms in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire; (coopted) feminism via medievalism inDisney's Maleficent; (neo)medievalism in Babylon 5 and Crusade; cosmopolitan anxieties and national identity in Netflix's Marco Polo; mapping Everealm in The Quest; undergraduate perceptions ofthe "medieval" and the "Middle Ages"; and medievalism in the prosopopeia and corpsepaint of Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. Karl Fugelso is Professor of Art History at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland. Contributors: Dustin M. Frazier Wood, Daniel Helbert, Ann F. Howey, Carol Jamison, Ann M. Martinez, Kara L. McShane, Lisa Myers, Elan Justice Pavlinich, Katie Peebles, Scott Riley, Paul B. Sturtevant, Dean Swinford, Renée Ward, Angela Jane Weisl, Jeremy Withers.Table of ContentsEditorial Note - "A Sense of Life in Things Inert": The Animistic Figurations in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Medievalist Texts - Scott Riley Future Nostalgias: Environmental Medievalism and Lanier's Southern Chivalry - Daniel Glynn Helbert T. H. White's "Forest Sauvage": Nostalgia and Loss - Lisa Myers Elvencentrism: The Green Medievalism of Tolkien's Elven Realms - Ann M. Martinez Fragmentary Dreams: John Aubrey's Medieval Heritage Construction - Katie Peebles Charter Horns and the Antiquarian Imagination in Early Modern England - Dustin Frazier Wood Giving Voice to Griselda: Radical Reimaginings of a Medieval Tale - Renée Ward Medieval and Futuristic Hells: The Influence of Dante on Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" - Jeremy Withers Reading Westeros: George R. R. Martin's Multi-Layered Medievalisms - Carol Jamison Modernity in the Middle: The Medieval Fantasy of (Coopted) Feminism in Disney's Maleficent - Elan Justice (E J) Pavlinich Future Medieval: (Neo)Medievalism in Babylon 5 and Crusade - Ann F. Howey Cosmopolitan Anxieties and National Identity in the Netflix Marco Polo - Kara L. McShane Mapping Everealm: Space, Time, and Medieval Fictions in The Quest - Angela Jane Weisl Medievalisms of the Mind: Undergraduate Perceptions of the "Medieval" and the "Middle Ages" - Paul Sturtevant Mask of the Medieval Corpse: Prosopopeia and Corpsepaint in Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas - Dean Swinford
£75.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels by
Book SynopsisA new source for Shakespeare's plays, only recently uncovered, is investigated here with a full edition and facsimile of the text. New sources for Shakespeare do not turn up every day... This is a truly significant one that has not heretofore been studied or published. The list of passages now traced back to this source is impressive. - David Bevington, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" is the only uniquely existent, unpublished manuscript that can be shown to have been a source for Shakespeare's plays. George North wrote the treatise in 1576 while at Kirtling Hall, the North family estate in Cambridgeshire. His manuscript, newly uncovered by the authors at the British Library, has many implications for our understanding of Shakespeare's plays. for example, not only does it bring clarity to the Fool's mysterious reference to Merlin in King Lear, but also upsets the prevailing opinion that Shakespeare invented the final hours of Jack Cade in 2 Henry VI. Linguistic and thematic correspondences between the North manuscript and Shakespeare's plays make it clear that the playwright borrowed from this document in other plays as well, including Richard III, 3 Henry VI, Henry V, King John, Macbeth, and Coriolanus. The opening chapters of the book investigate such connections; the volume also contains both a transcript and a facsimile of "A Brief Discourse", making this previously unknown document readily available. DENNIS MCCARTHY is an independent scholar; JUNE SCHLUETER is Charles A. Dana Professor Emerita of English at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania.Trade ReviewFor years scholars have debated what inspired William Shakespeare's writings. Now, with the help of software typically used by professors to nab cheating students, two writers have discovered an unpublished manuscript they believe the Bard of Avon consulted to write King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Henry and seven other plays. The news has caused Shakespeareans to sit up and take notice. 'If it proves to be what they say it is, it is a once-in-a-generation - or several generations - find,' said Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. * NEW YORK TIMES *In 1576, English diplomat George North wrote a treatise on rebellion that for almost 450 years went largely unnoticed. . . . McCarthy and Schlueter provide a thorough overview of the history and provenance of the manuscript, along with compelling explanations about how it influenced Shakespeare's plays. Most helpful is the inclusion of the entire North manuscript in an oversize and easy-to-read format. Highly recommended. x * NEW YORK TIMES *A Brief Discourse is one of the most exciting recent discoveries in the long history of Shakespeare source study. The editors' argument appears to resolve longstanding textual cruxes around Cade's last hours, Merlin's cryptic prophecy in Lear, and a key speech by Canterbury in Henry V, which sheds light on Gloucester's opening monologue in Richard III, Macbeth's catalogue of dogs, and several other discrete passages within the Shakespeare canon. With considerable credit to Boydell and Brewer and The British Library, the book is also beautifully produced and a pleasure to navigate, from its introductory essay, to the modernized transcription, to the full-color facsimile of the manuscript. * SIXTEENTH CENTURY JOURNAL *Table of ContentsGeorge North and the Kirtling Hall Manuscript Uncovering Connections between North's "Discourse" and Shakespeare's Plays The Final Hours of Jack Cade The Fool, Merlin's Prophecy, and the Upside-Down World of King Lear Political Monologues and a Glimpse of Coriolanus Afterword: The Odds That the Parallels Are Coincidental Transcript: "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" Facsimile: "A brief discourse of rebellion and Rebells, wherin is showyd, ye treasur yt Traytors in ye execution of theyr treason, by tym attayne to" Index
£75.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the
Book SynopsisA study of how the use of Ovid in Middle English texts affected Shakespeare's treatment of the poet. The debt owed by Shakespeare to Ovid is a major and important topic in scholarship. This book offers a fresh approach to the subject, in aiming to account for the Middle English literary lenses through which Shakespeare and his contemporaries often approached Greco-Roman mythology. Drawing its principal examples from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, Lucrece, and Twelfth Night, it reinvestigates a selection of moments in Shakespeare's works that have been widely identified in previous criticism as "Ovidian", scrutinising their literary alchemy with an eye to uncovering how ostensibly classical references may be haunted by the under-acknowledged, spectral presences of medieval intertexts and traditions. Its central concern is the mutual hauntings of Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower in the early modern literary imagination; it demonstrates that "Ovidian" allusions to mythological figures such as Ariadne, Philomela, or Narcissus in Shakespeare's dramatic and poetic works were sometimes simultaneously mediated by the hermeneutic and affective legacies of earlier vernacular texts,including The Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Confessio Amantis. LINDSAY ANN REID is a Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway.Trade ReviewShakespeare and Ovid are a familiar coupling; so too, to medievalists, are Ovid and the medieval; and the pairing of Shakespeare and the medieval is making its presence increasingly felt. * TRANSLATION AND LITERATURE *Scholarly efforts to rethink the once sacrosanct period-divide between late medieval and early modern English culture have been under way for quite some time now, and the Studies in Renaissance Literature series has made several important contributions to these exertions. Lindsay Ann Reid's Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval is the latest-exhibiting the perspicacity, nuance, and scope that we have come to expect from the series. The strength of this study is its dense and challenging close readings of ancient, medieval, and early modern texts. * STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER *Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval is a courageous book rectifying the influential oversights by celebrated critics of a canonical writer. With thorough research and probing insights, Reid corrects a distorted understanding of the culture and traditions informing early modern literature, and of Shakespeare himself. * PARERGON *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chaucer's Ghoast, Ovid's 'Pleasant Fables', and the Spectre of Gower Shakespeare's Ovid and Sly's Chaucer Theseus and Ariadne [and her Sister] Philomela and the Dread of Dawn The Cross-Dressed Narcissus Afterword Appendix 1: The Gowerian Riddles of Chaucer's Ghoast Appendix 2: Ariadne's Desertion in Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence Bibliography
£75.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medieval English Theatre 40
Book SynopsisEssays on aspects of early drama. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The articles in this fortieth volume engage with the key communities for early theatre: royalty, city and household, and religious institutions. Topics include the Royal Entry of Elizabeth Woodville into Norwich (1469); Henry VIII's Robin Hood entertainment for Catherine of Aragon; the sun's contribution to stage effects in the York Corpus Christi Play: the engagement with local worthies in Mankind; and the convent drama of Huy, in the Low Countries. Contributors: Aurélie Blanc, Philip Butterworth, Clare Egan, John Marshall, Olivia Robinson, Michael Spence, Meg Twycross.Table of ContentsProducing the Journal over Forty Years - Meg Twycross William Parnell, supplier of staging and ingenious devices, and his role in the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich in 1469 - Philip Butterworth William Parnell, supplier of staging and ingenious devices, and his role in the visit of Elizabeth Woodville to Norwich in 1469 - Michael Spence The Huy Nativity from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century: Translation, Play-Back, and Pray-Back - Olivia Robinson The Huy Nativity from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century: Translation, Play-Back, and Pray-Back - Aurélie Blanc A 'Gladnes' of Robin Hood's Men: Henry VIII Entertains Queen Katherine - John Marshall Reading Mankind in a Culture of Defamation - Clare Egan The Sun in York (Part One): Illumination, Reflection, and Timekeeping for the Corpus Christi Play - Meg Twycross
£27.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Medieval English Theatre 44
Book SynopsisNewest research into drama and performance of the Middle Ages and Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays , and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The papers in this volume explore richly interlocking topics. Themes of royalty and play continue from Volume 43. We have the first in-depth examination of the employment of the now-famous Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, at the royal courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. An entertaining survey of the popular European game of blanket-tossing accompanies the translation of a raucous, sophisticated, but surprisingly humane Dutch rederijkers farce. The Towneley plays remain fertile ground for further research, and this blanket-tossing farce illuminates a key scene of the well-known Second Shepherd's Play. New exploration of a colloquial reference to 'Stafford Blue' in another Towneley pageant, Noah, not only enlivens the play's social context but contributes to important current re-thinking of the manuscript's date. Two papers bring home the theatrical potential of food and eating. We learn how the Tudor interlude Jacob and Esau dramatises the preparation and provision of food from the Genesis story. Serving and eating meals becomes a means of social, theological, and theatrical manipulation. Contrastingly, in the N. Town Last Supper play and a French convent drama, we see how the bread of Passover, the Last Supper, and the Mass could be evoked, layered and shared in performance. In both these plays the audiences' experiences of theatre and of communion overlap and inform each other.Table of ContentsJohn Blanke's Wages: No Business Like Show Business - Nadia van Pelt Perpetually Editing Towneley: A Speculative Textual Note on Mrs Noah's 'Stafford Blue' - Pamela M. King Understanding the Blanket-Toss in Medieval Drama: The Case of Een Cluijt van Lijsgen en Jan Lichthart - Ben Parsons and Bas Jongenelen Alimentary Address and the Management of Appetite and Hunger in Jacob and Esau - Ernst Gerhardt Last Supper, First Communion: Some Staging Challenges in N. Town and the Huy Nuns' Play based on Deguileville's Pèlerinage de la vie humaine - Elisabeth Dutton and Olivia Robinson
£28.00
Boydell and Brewer Medieval English Theatre 45
Book SynopsisNewest research into drama and performance from the Middle Ages and the Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This volume offers new perspectives in three important areas. It opens with an investigation of the tantalising image of the Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, in the Westminster Tournament Roll. Complementing the assessment of the documentary evidence for his employment in our last volume, it uncovers the surprising complexity of how Islamic dress was represented at the court of Henry VIII. Two essays engage with the challenging Croxton Play of the Sacr
£33.25
Liverpool University Press Fictional Thinking: A Poetics & Rhetoric of
Book SynopsisThis book offers a theory of the archaic mode of fictional thinking and a methodology for the analysis of fictional worlds. It presupposes the mutual independence of the description of a fictional world, in any language or medium, and the described fictional world. Such a world is generated by an autonomous fictional structure, which reflects the spontaneous expectations of the spectator, and thematic specification. A model of this structure is presented, comprising seven layers: personified, mythical, praxical, naive, ironic and aesthetic -- and overriding these layers, the fictional experience on the level of relationship between the fictional world and spectator. This experience depends on the spectator's ability to complement such a description with pertinent associations, drawn from shared cultural resources, and psychical mechanisms of response. Explanations and examples are couched in poetic, pragmatic, aesthetic and rhetoric methodologies. An Introduction surveys the major contributions made to a methodology of fictional analysis since Aristotle's Poetics, problematises them and suggests possible alternatives. Part I is devoted to the inner structure of fictional worlds; i.e., to the poetic rules that generate them. The innovation of this approach lies in its multi-layered nature. Part II deals with the structure of the fictional experience, which is metaphoric and rhetoric in nature. Part III deals with the specific structures of fictional worlds that reflect the particular intentions and purposes of their authors. Part IV contains analyses of actual fictional worlds that illustrate the application of the previously presented principles. The focus throughout is on theatre fictional worlds which by their nature exhibit the most complex fictional thoughts that the human brain can generate. The theoretical insights gained for theatre assumedly apply to descriptions of such worlds in any language or medium. More than a hundred fictional worlds created during 2500 years of theatre recorded history are analysed. The volume has been purposefully designed to address undergraduate and postgraduate student needs to provide a fundamental competence of theatre studies.Table of ContentsIntroduction: State of the Art & Perspectives; The Nature of Fictional Worlds; The Mythical Layer; The Praxical Layer; The Naive Layer; The Ironic Layer; The Modal Layer; The Aesthetic Layer; Structure of Character; Characterisation & Credibility; Intertextual Relations; Fictional Interaction; Fictional Time & Place; Metaphoric Structure; Allegoric Structure; Rhetoric Structure; Spectator's Complementation; Hamartia / Catastrophe Structure; Virtue / Villainy Structure; Hamartia & Christianity; Absurdist Structure; Structure of Conflict; Ritual Experience & Truth; Anti-Aristotelian Poetics; Generic Transformation: The Hippolytus-Phaedra; Generation of Life is a Dream from Oedipus the King; Deconstruction of Archetypal Characterisation in The Seagull; The Chairs in Performance; Index.
£28.79
Liverpool University Press Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama &
Book SynopsisMagic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticising it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights' designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Sixteenth-Century Magic; The Supernatural in Giordano Bruno's Natural Philosophy; Early Modern England's Belief in Fictional Witchcraft; Fictions of Alchemy & Angelic Communication in the Confusion of Religious & Magical Fiction in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Madness & Damnation: The Consequences of Macbeth's Magic; Witchcraft, Political Scandal & the Theatrical Moment of Middleton's The Witch; Alchemy & Witchcraft in The Drama of Ben Jonson; Magic in the Tempest: Shakespeare's Critique of Rough Art & Harsh Reason.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Comedy: A Critical Introduction
Book SynopsisHerewith an original approach to the study of comedy. While assimilating theoretical insights from Aristotle to the present day, it contests, inter alia, the theory of comedy's ritual origin; challenges the age-old and continuing attempts to determine the structure of action that characterises comedy; and suggests instead that structures of action are shared by all genres, and that it is the specific mood that accounts for their differences. Mood is a prism through which a playwright wishes the spectator to perceive a fictional world. Comedy is characterised by its light-hearted mood, which generates a specific kind of laughter. If mood determines the genre of a fictional world, in contrast to current theory, comedy, satiric drama and grotesque drama are different genres promoting different moods and aiming at different effects. Each genre should thus be read and experienced according to its inherent rules and not in terms of a theory that lumps these genres together. The book discusses the pivotal role of commedia dell'arte in both reflecting comedy's classical tradition and influencing subsequent developments, especially in comedy's style of acting; it explores the relations between comedy and carnival and between comedy and joke-telling; probes the view that comedy is characterised by a unique vision; and examines comedy in different media -- such as cinema, comics, puppet theatre, radio drama and TV drama. Eli Rozik questions the traditional semiotic view that all meaning is in the text, and suggests that, in generating comedic meaning, the spectator's contribution/reaction is no less vital than that of the text itself. Major contributions to a general theory of comedy, and to a sound methodology for the analysis of comedies, are presented, and ample reference to comedies and/or pertinent analyses of such comedies, written over the course of 2,500 years of theatre recorded history, is provided to enable readers to grasp ideas in their original terminology and logic. Each presentation is accompanied by critical comments which attempt both to introduce the problems involved and suggest possible solutions.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy: Readings in
Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.
£100.00
Liverpool University Press Hölderlin and the Poetry of Tragedy: Readings in
Book SynopsisHölderlin (1770-1843) is the magnificent writer whom Nietzsche called 'my favourite poet'. His writings and poetry have been formative throughout the twentieth century, and as influential as those of Hegel, his friend. At the same time, his madness has made his poetry infinitely complex as it engages with tragedy, and irreconcilable breakdown, both political and personal, with anger and with mourning. This study gives a detailed approach to Hölderlin's writings on Greek tragedy, especially Sophocles, whom he translated into German, and gives close attention to his poetry, which is never far from an engagement with tragedy. Hölderlin's writings, always fascinating, enable a consideration of the various meanings of tragedy, and provide a new reading of Shakespeare, particularly Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth; the work proceeds by opening into discussion of Nietzsche, especially The Birth of Tragedy. Since Hölderlin was such a decisive figure for Modernism, to say nothing of modern Germany, he matters intensely to such differing theorists and philosophers as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, all of whose views are discussed herein. Drawing upon the insights of Hegelian philosophy and psychoanalysis, this book gives the English-speaking reader ready access to a magnificent body of poetry and to the poet as a theorist of tragedy and of madness. Hölderlin's poetry is quoted freely, with translations and commentary provided. This book is the first major account of Hölderlin in English to offer the student and general reader a critical account of a vital body of work which matters to any study of poetry and to all who are interested in poetry's relationships to madness. It is essential reading in the understanding of how tragedy pervades literature and politics, and how tragedy has been regarded and written about, from Hegel to Walter Benjamin.
£32.50
Liverpool University Press Two Loves I Have: A New Reading of Shakespeare's
Book SynopsisPerhaps the most astonishing set of personal poems ever written, Shakespeare's Sonnets have both delighted and puzzled readers down the ages. Two Loves I Have is a reading of the sequence that brings the four characters involved to life. The 'fair, kind and true' young man to whom the majority of poems are addressed, the woman 'as black as hell, as dark as night' who dominates a part of the narrator's inner landscape against his will, the narrator himself, who at times is unexpectedly wholly at ease with his mistress, but at other times is sunk in a form of self-loathing, and whom nothing on earth will deter in his devotion to the young man ... these three play out a drama as fierce as that in any of the author's plays. And the author himself, at some remove behind the narrator, is the shadowy fourth character. Did he invent the young man and the Dark Lady? Did he adapt an existing situation in his life or indeed record it simply as it was? Whatever the historical fact, which can never be known, the poetic situation is enthralling. Without insisting on any particular view, Two Loves I Have (from sonnet 144) allows the reader a vista of the whole sonnet sequence, and a sense of its shifting currents. J. D. Winter carefully elucidates each individual poem, thus enabling the reader not only to come to terms with their outward meaning but to appreciate the rhetorical flow and the poet's idiosyncratic use of the sonnet-form itself. The sonnet sequence has been a comparatively neglected part of the Shakespearean canon. The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016 is an appropriate time to shed a new light upon the poems.
£26.19
Liverpool University Press Hide Fox, and All After: What Lies Concealed in
Book SynopsisIs there anything more to say on Hamlet? 'Hide fox, and all after,' a casual quip of the Prince, as he and his enemy the King start to hunt each other down, is taken as the title for this closely-considered survey of the play. J D Winter finds question after question in it raised and unanswered, as if the play's dramatic method were in part to create uncertainty in its audience and so draw them in. He adopts three phrases from the text to provide a context for his approach: the play's the thing, a rhapsody of words, and the invisible event. The first phrase suggests the spectacle itself, without regard to what has been written about it. There is no reference to outside opinion nor is another literary work named. The second indicates an awareness of the text as poem. While the tremendous sweep of Shakespearean blank verse, the prose-paragraphs on fire with their own poetry, the whispering gallery of metaphor, can scarcely be accorded proper respect in a prose commentary, certain rhapsodic effects are everywhere noted. Finally, the play is contained within a mystery. So much seems to happen; so little seems to happen. Almost all the major characters are subject to a pattern of error in their dealings as they are swept on from one catastrophic misjudgement to another. The level to which the play is focussed upon the blind time between events is unusually high. This too draws in the audience; it is a part of the spectators own internal experience. There can be no definitive answer to Hamlet or Hamlet. But like a signpost in a swarming mist, the third phrase may offer a faint clue: the invisible event.
£26.19
Liverpool University Press Supernatural Fiction in Early Modern Drama &
Book SynopsisMagic and the supernatural are common themes in the philosophy and fiction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book explores varieties of scepticism and belief exhibited by a selection of philosophers and playwrights, including Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton, explicating how each author defines the supernatural, whether he assumes magic to operate in the world, and how he uses occult principles to explain what can be known and what is ethical. Beliefs and claims concerning impossible phenomena and superhuman agency require literary historians to determine whether an occult system of magical operation is being described in a given text. Each chapter in this volume evaluates whether a chosen early modern author is endorsing magic as efficacious or divinely sanctioned, or criticising it for being fraudulent or unholy. By examining works of fiction, it is possible to explore fantastic settings which were not intended to be synonymous with the early modern audience's everyday experience, settings where magic exists and operates according to the playwrights' designs. This book also sets out to determine what historical sources provided given authors with knowledge of the occult and speculates on how aware an audience would have been of academic, classical, or popular contexts surrounding the text at hand.Table of ContentsIntroduction; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa & Sixteenth-Century Magic; The Supernatural in Giordano Bruno's Natural Philosophy; Early Modern England's Belief in Fictional Witchcraft; Fictions of Alchemy & Angelic Communication in the Confusion of Religious & Magical Fiction in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; Madness & Damnation: The Consequences of Macbeth's Magic; Witchcraft, Political Scandal & the Theatrical Moment of Middleton's The Witch; Alchemy & Witchcraft in The Drama of Ben Jonson; Magic in the Tempest: Shakespeare's Critique of Rough Art & Harsh Reason.
£30.00
James Currey African Theatre 14: Contemporary Women
Book SynopsisLooks at the lives, challenges and contributions of African women from across the continent to making and participating in theatre in the 21st century. Drawing on expertise from across the African continent this collection reflects the realities for women working and making theatre: how Egyptian director Dalia Basiouny has documented the "Tahrir Stories" of the Egyptian Revolution; how in Uganda women have used various theatrical devices, such as oral poetry, to seek common ground in a rural-urban inter-generational theatre project; and the use of physical theatre to examine disavowed memory in South Africa. The contributors also look at how practitioners are re-thinking performance space and modes of performance for gendered advocacy in Botswanan theatre, and how women are addressing gender-based violence and rape culture, comparing performance and street-based activism in South Africa and India. A particular strength of the volume is its interviews: with Jalila Baccar of Tunisia, by Marvin Carlson; six Ethiopian actresses are interviewed and introduced by Jane Plastow and Mahlet Solomon; and Ariane Zaytzeff explores "Making art to reinvent culture" with Odile Gakire Katese of Rwanda. The new play to be published is The Sentence by Sefi Atta, introduced and contextualized by Christine Matzke. Volume Editors: JANE PLASTOW & YVETTE HUTCHISON Guest Editor: CHRISTINE MATZKE Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama at the University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of WarwickTrade ReviewThe geographical span of the work under discussion is impressive, moving through Egypt, Tunisia, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa, France, the UK, U.SA and Germany. * STUDIES IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE *The book shoulders the responsibility of bringing to light the theatre-making efforts of African artists within their local contexts. * THEATRE RESEARCH INTERNATIONAL *This book should be seen as a necessary guide that should enable others to pursue the conversation on how to improve accessibility and the work of African women in theatre. * LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS BLOG *Table of ContentsForeword - Jane Plastow and Yvette Hutchison and Christine Matzke Introduction - Sandra Richards The work of Dalia Basiouny: an artist's account - Dalia Basiouny Performativities as activism: addressing gender-based violence and rape culture in South Africa & beyond - Nicola Cloete Performativities as activism: addressing gender-based violence and rape culture in South Africa & beyond - Sara Matchett Exploring poetic voice in the Uganda Women's Intergenerational Theatre Project - Susan Nalugwa Kiguli and Jane Plastow 'After images': impressions of the 'after' by South Africa performer-choreographer Mamela Nyamza's - Alude Mahali Jallila Baccar of Tunisia: a portrait of an artist - Marvin Carlson In conversation: interrogating and shifting societal perceptions of women in Botswana through theatre - Lebogang Disele Binti Leo: women in the arts in Tanzania - Vicensia Shule Odile Gakire Katese: making art & reinventing culture with women: interview - Ariane Zaytzeff Contemporary Ethiopian actresses - Jane Plastow and Mahlet Solomon Introduction to Sefi Atta's The Sentence - Christine Matzke Playscript: The Sentence by Sefi Atta - Sefi Atta Book reviews
£23.82
James Currey African Theatre 15: China, India & the Eastern
Book SynopsisExtends the study of China's "soft power" into theatre studies and looks more widely at syncretic traditions evolving in other long-term historic exchanges between Asia and Africa. China is the main focus of this volume, and articles consider the way it is using "soft power" in its extensive engagement with South Africa, and, through its support for theatre festivals, with Lusophone countries in Africa. China's involvement with the construction of theatres, opera houses and cultural facilities as part of its foreign aid programmes in such countries as Algeria, Cameroon, Mauritius, Ghana and Senegal, provides the background to the playscript from this volume, Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) by Daniel Schauf, Philipp Scholtysik & Jonas Alsleben, that explores Chinese impact in Somalia. Issues also emerge around what China is "importing" culturally fromAfrica. In 2012, Soyinka's The Lion & the Jewel was produced there, and a season of Fugard's work was enjoyed in Beijing during 2014. During 2016 Brett Bailey's Macbeth Opera will be performed in Macao. In recent years courses in African theatre have been started in Beijing by Biodun Jeyifo, and also taught by Femi Osofisan whose well-known Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels and Once Upon Four Robbers have been translatedinto Mandarin, along with Soyinka's The Lion & the Jewel. The volume also includes contributions on exchanges between other Asian countries and Africa such as articles on the production of African plays in Bangladesh and onthe persistence of African performance traditions among African migrants in India. Attention is paid to the syncretic theatre traditions that have evolved wherever African and Asian populations have been in close and extended contact, as in Mauritius and Durban. Unusual exchanges and globalized theatre surfaces in the course of the volume. For example, while the Guangdong Provincial Puppet Art Theatre Group performed at the 41st Grahamstown Festival (2015), Chinese puppeteers are being trained to manipulate the War Horse for a Beijing production. Volume Editors: JAMES GIBBS & FEMI OSOFISAN FEMI OSOFISAN Thalia Laureate of the International Association of TheatreCritics 2016 Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor ofDrama, University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick.Table of ContentsIntroduction - James Gibbs I AFRICA'S DISCOVERY OF CHINESE THEATRE China in Ghana: an interview with Mohammed Ben Abdallah about the National Theatre, built by the Chinese Government in Accra; introduced & annotated by James Gibbs - Awo Mana Asiedu The Orphan of Chao: A Chinese Play at a Nigerian University, 1979 - Tony Humphries II CHINA'S DISCOVERY OF AFRICA: TEXTS, FESTIVALS & BUILDINGS Theatre in China in 1965, with a focus on War Drums Along the Equator - an interview with Robert Bolt, with an introduction by James Gibbs - James Gibbs The post-colonial imaginary & politics of representation in the Macao SAR: the Teatrau & the (re) emergence of 'lusofonia' under Chinese stars - Isabel Maria Da Costa Morais China-Africa relations at the Mindelact Theatre Festival, Sao Vicente, Cabo Verde - Rita M. Rufino Valente China meets South Africa in the theatre: some recent South African work about China & in China, & The Year of China in South Africa - Ying Cheng A checklist of African playscripts translated into Chinese - Wang Shang Introducing Blickakte - (Acts of Viewing): 'Do I see what I see, do I know what I know, do I hear what I hear' - Christine Matzke Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Daniel Schauf Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Philipp Scholtysik Playscript: Blickakte (Acts of Viewing) based on an idea by Ahmed Jama Aden - Jonas Alsleben III INDIAN THEATRE EXCHANGES WITH EAST & SOUTH AFRICA: HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS Indians of African descent: Sidis, Bava Gor & spiritual practices - Beheroze Shroff Jay Pather, South African artist of Indian ancestry: Transforming society in post-apartheid South Africa through his theatre-dance works - Ketu H. Katrak IV CONTESTED SPACES: Asian & African theatre in Mauritius: A report from the front line - Michael Walling Hidden under a black veil in Terra Incognita: representations of Africa in Bangladesh theatre, with a checklist of African playscripts performed in Bangladesh - Syed Jamil Ahmed Book Reviews
£70.00
Bodleian Library Shakespeare's Dead
Book SynopsisPyramus: ‘Now die, die, die, die, die.’ [Dies] A Midsummer Night’s Dream 'Shakespeare’s Dead' reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for thinking about early modern death, with particular reference to the plague which ravaged Britain during his lifetime, and against the divisive background of the Reformation. But it also shows how death on stage is different from death in real life. The dead come to life, ghosts haunt the living, and scenes of mourning are subverted by the fact that the supposed corpse still breathes. Shakespeare scripts his scenes of dying with extraordinary care. Famous final speeches – like Hamlet’s ‘The rest is silence’, Mercutio’s ‘A plague o’ both your houses’, or Richard III’s ‘My kingdom for a horse’ – are also giving crucial choices to the actors as to exactly how and when to die. Instead of the blank finality of death, we get a unique entrance into the loneliness or confusion of dying. 'Shakespeare’s Dead' tells of death-haunted heroes such as Macbeth and Hamlet, and death-teasing heroines like Juliet, Ophelia, and Cleopatra. It explores the fear of ‘something after death’, and characters’ terrifying visions of being dead. But it also uncovers the constant presence of death in Shakespeare’s comedies, and how the grinning jester might be a leering skull in disguise. This book celebrates the paradox: the life in death in Shakespeare.
£18.99
Bodleian Library Mapping Shakespeare's World
Book SynopsisThe locations of Shakespeare’s plays range from Greece, Turkey and Syria to England, and they range in time from 1000 BC to the early Tudor age. He never set a play explicitly in Elizabethan London, which he and his audience inhabited, but always in places remote in space or time. How much did he – and his contemporaries – know about the foreign cities where the plays took place? What expectations did an audience have if the curtain rose on a drama which claimed to take place in Verona, Elsinore, Alexandria or ancient Troy? This fully illustrated book explores these questions, surveying Shakespeare’s world through contemporary maps, geographical texts, paintings and drawings. The results are intriguing and sometimes surprising. Why should Love’s Labour’s Lost be set in the Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre? Was the Forest of Arden really in Warwickshire? Why do two utterly different plays like The Comedy of Errors and Pericles focus strongly on ancient Ephesus? Where was Illyria? Did the Merry Wives have to live in Windsor? Why did Shakespeare sometimes shift the settings of the plays from those he found in his literary sources? It has always been easy to say that wherever the plays are set, Shakespeare was really writing about human psychology and human nature, and that the settings are irrelevant. This book takes a different view, showing that many of his locations may have had resonances which an Elizabethan audience would pick up and understand, and it shows how significant the geographical and historical background of the plays could be.
£23.75
Bodleian Library Portraits of Shakespeare
Book SynopsisWithin Shakespeare’s lifetime there was already some curiosity about what the writer of such brilliant poems, sonnets and plays looked like. Yet like so much else about him, Shakespeare’s appearance is mysterious. Why is it so difficult to find images of him that were definitely made during his life? Which images are most likely to have been made by those close to Shakespeare, and why do these differ from each other? Also, why do newly ‘discovered’ images claimed as representations of the playwright emerge with such regularity? Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones examines these questions, beginning with an analysis of the tradition of the ‘author portrait’ before, during, and after Shakespeare’s life. She provides a detailed critique of the three images of Shakespeare likeliest to derive from life-time portrayals: the bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon; the ‘Droeshout engraving’ from the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623; and the ‘Chandos portrait’, painted in oil on canvas in the early seventeenth century. Through a fresh exploration of the evidence and groundbreaking research, she identifies a plausible new candidate for the painter of ‘Chandos’. This also throws new light on the last years of Shakespeare’s life. This generously illustrated book also examines the afterlife of these three images, as memorials, in advertising and in graphic art, together with their adaptation in later commemorative statues: all evidence of a continuing desire to put a face to one of the most famous names in literature.
£14.24
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Companion to Lope de Vega
Book SynopsisAn assessment of the life, work and reputation of Spain's leading Golden Age dramatist A Companion to Lope de Vega brings together essays by leading international scholars on the life and works of Lope de Vega Carpio, the 'fénix de los ingenios', or, as his rival Miguel de Cervantes dubbed him, 'monstruo de la naturaleza'. Spain's foremost Golden Age playwright excelled in all literary genres, including prose and poetry, also covered here. The contributors evaluate current critical debates and issues in Lope de Vega studies, as well as providing new readings of key texts. It has been the aim of the editors to do justice to the variety, profusion and originality of Lope's work, placing the writer and his output firmly in their historical context as well asassessing his reputation in literary history. The wide variety of critical perspectives found in the volume reflects the liveliness of the debate surrounding this enduringly popular figure whose drama is enjoying a renaissance intheatres around the globe. Alexander Samson lectures in Golden Age literature at University College London. Jonathan Thacker is Fellow in Spanish at Merton College, Oxford. Other Contributors: Elaine Canning, Geraldine Coates, Frederick A de Armas, Victor Dixon, Geraint Evans, Tyler Fisher, Edward H. Friedman, Alejandro Garcia Reidy, David Johnston, Arantza Mayo, David McGrath, Barbara Mujica, Ali Rizavi José Maria Ruano de la Haza,Isabel Torres, Xavier Tubau, Duncan Wheeler.Trade Review[U]n acierto de la editorial Tamesis . Con la presente publicación, el estudioso de Lope de Vega cuenta ahora con una sólida referencia no sólo como objeto de estudio sino también como herramienta docente... Samson y Thacker han editado, así, un utilísimo libro que logra lo que muy pocos estudios consiguen hoy en día, a saber, el sentir a un Lope vivo, moderno y relevante, cuya trayectoria palpita con una claridad y una coherencia modélicas. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *A Companion to Lope de Vega es una obra que se mantendrá vigente en el estudio del dramaturgo español por mucho tiempo ya que presenta ideas fundamentales e innovadoras para el conocimiento del teatro en España y la comprensión del mundo, la obra y el hombre que fue Lope Félix de Vega Carpio. * ASSOCIATION OF SPANISH & PORTUGUESE HISTORICAL STUDIES BULLETIN *Those who take or teach a Golden Age literature course should have this book at hand. [.] All contributors offer interesting, up-to-date information and abundant critical analysis of the author's work. Recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Lope's Life and Work Lope's Knowledge - Victor Dixon Lope de Vega and Theatre in Madrid - José María Ruano de la Haza From Stage to Page: Editorial History and Literary Promotion in Lope de Vega's Partes de Comedias - Alejandro Garcia Reidy Imagining Lope's Lyric Poetry in the 'Soneto primero' of the Rimas - Tyler Fisher 'Quien en virtud emplea su ingenio...': Lope de Vega's Religious Poetry - Arantza Mayo Outside In: The Subject[s] at Play in Las rimas humanas y divinas de Tomé de Burguillos - Isabel Torres The Arte nuevo de hacer comedias: Lope's dramatic statement - Jonathan W. Thacker Three Canonical Plays - Alexander Samson Lope de Vega, the Chronicle-Legend Plays and Collective Memory - Geraldine Hazbun Sacred Souls and Sinners: Abstinence and Adaptation in Lope's Religious Drama - Elaine Canning Lope, the Comedian - Jonathan W. Thacker Lope de Vega's Speaking Pictures: Tantalizing Titians and Forbidden Michelangelos in La quinta de Florencia - Frederick A de Armas Performing Sanctity: Lope's Use of Teresian Iconography in Santa Teresa de Jesús - Barbara Mujica Masculinities and Honour in Los comendadores de Córdoba - Geraint Evans El castigo sin venganza and the Ironies of Rhetoric - Edward H Friedman Life's Pilgrim: El peregrino en su patria - Alexander Samson Novelas a Marcia Leonarda - Ali Rizavi La Dorotea: a Tragicomedy in Prose - Xavier Tubau Lope as Icon - David McGrath A Modern Day Fénix: Lope de Vega's Cinematic Revivals - Duncan Wheeler Lope in Translation: Opening the Closed Book - David Johnston Translations of Titles Guide to Further Reading Bibliography
£28.49
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Federico García Lorca: The Poetry in All Things
Book SynopsisFeted by his contemporaries, Federico García Lorca's status has only grown since his death in 1936. This book shows just why his fame has endured, through an exploration of his most popular works: Romancero Gitano, Poeta en Nueva York and the trilogy of tragic plays - Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba.Trade ReviewFederico García Lorca: The Poetry in All Things provides a well-balanced and critically acute reappraisal of some of Lorca's most important works, reminding us of the enduring relevance of the Spanish poet in speaking into our modern world. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. Lorca, the Gitano Chapter 2. Lorca, the Modern Chapter 3. Lorca, the Feminist Conclusion Suggested Further Reading Bibliography
£66.50
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Seneca's Medea and Republican Spain: Performing
Book SynopsisBased on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, this book provides the most detailed reconstruction ever of one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history. Winner of the 2019-20 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize On 18 June 1933, one of the most important events in Spanish theatrical history took place before an audience of 3,000 spectators in the ruins of the Roman Theatre in Mérida. Translated into Spanish by philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, staged by the renowned Xirgu-Borràs Company and funded by the government, the performance of Seneca's Medea was a triumph of republican culture and widely hailed for its new dramatic and scenic languages. This book provides the most detailed reconstruction of this pivotal production to date, setting it in context and analysing its origin and legacy. Early twentieth-century intellectuals considered Seneca, 'the philosopher from Córdoba', the epitome of Spanishness and the first in an illustrious line of playwrights stretching from Spain's Roman Antiquity to its Silver Age. His play was seen as the ideal vehicle to showcase the Second Spanish Republic's cultural, social and educational agenda but provoked a furious backlash from opponents to the government's progressive programme. The book shows how the performance became a cultural ritual which stood at the centre of critical discussions on national identity, politics, secularism, women's rights and new European aesthetics of theatre-making. Based on extensive archival research and containing rare and previously unpublished photos, it will be of interest to theatre historians, scholars of Classical Reception and historians of the Second Spanish Republic.Table of ContentsList of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: A Spanish Medea in Republican Spain I. Seneca's Medea in Mérida: A reconstruction II. Seneca and Hispania III. Republica nunc sum: Building a Republic IV. Medea and the social revolution V. Hispano-Roman tragedy on a reformed stage Conclusion: The Republican Medea that was in Mérida Bibliography Index
£80.75
Liverpool University Press Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Women's
Book SynopsisFocusing on dramatic works by contemporary British and American playwrights, in conjunction with feminist political and theoretical texts, this book discusses feminist constructions of the category "Woman".Trade Review"With a shrewd grasp of theory and a comprehensive knowledge of British and American plays, Mary Brewer homes in on controversial issues among women - pornography, rape, mothering, domesticity and work, and debates about the butch/fem model and gender-bending among lesbians." -- From the Foreword by Alan Sinfield, Professor of Literature, University of Sussex.Table of ContentsContents: Foreword by Alan Sinfield; Introduction: Women and Representation; Contemporary Women's Theatre: The Plays; Feminist Constructions of Difference; Defining Race Organisation; Representations of Motherhood; And Who Would Call Her Mother?: Carers Without Control; Courts of Flaw: Representations of Lesbians and the Rights of Lesbian Mothers; Fortunes at Low Tide; The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood: Strategies for Resistance; Conformity or Rebellion: Lesbian Families at Risk; OtherMothers; The Sexgender/Racegender System; Survival as Resistance: Black Women and the Family; Black Women and the Race: Lifting as We Climb'; Re-constructing the Chitlin-Circuit': Race, Representation, and OtherMothers; Friedan's Daughters: Representations of Woman' at Work; The Return of the Happy Housewife: Feminists Re-forming Woman'; Resurrecting the Cult of Domesticity; Who's On Top? White Women, Work, and the Family; Power Feminism: The Genderquake; Working Across the Racial Divide: Imitating Anita; Woman' as Object; Universal Woman': The Trojan Horse of Feminism; Colourising Joan of Arc: Radicalised Femininity and the Politics of Appearance; The Pornography of Representation: Sex, Gender, Race, and Rape; Erotophobes; Black Women and the Sexual Politics of Rape; Woman' as Subject: Negotiating Multiple Identities; A Movement Out of Step With Itself; Women on the Borders of Womanhood': Negotiating Race, Sex, and Gender(s); Difference: What Makes a House a Home; Learning to Dance as Sisters; Infiltrating Woman': Butch/Fem Lesbian Subjectivity; Woman as Discursive Subject; The Butch/Fem Debate; Signs and Seduction; Butch, Fem, and the Mask of Womanliness; Performing Gender(s); Conclusion: Toward a Progressive Feminist Politics; A House of Difference; Index.
£29.95
Liverpool University Press Samuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama: The
Book SynopsisSamuel Beckett's Self-Referential Drama - The Sensitive Chaos, 2nd EditionTrade Review"... the book's principal value lies in Levy's penetrating observations about the ontology of the plays in performance, the reflexive, prism-like conundrums in them that fascinate and frustrate intelligent and attentive spectators and theater practitioners alike... Among the main virtues of this revised and enlarged edition is the addition of production anecdotes and performer-interviews that set Levy's critical ideas in newly illuminating practical context..." -- Journal of Beckett Studies."An intelligent, often fascinating analysis of Beckett's work." -- Choice."This current collection of essays is divided almost equally between theory and performance, but as often Shimon Levy treats the two as a single field as he explores the possibilities of chaos theory as a model for the theatrical experience, where 'even the tiniest detail may influence the presentation,' and moves on to explore the implications of Logical Positivism and Existentialism, all under the umbrella of the Cartesian Cogito. The essay on 'The Poetics of Offstage' is exemplary and should be required reading for theater directors." -- S. E. Gontarski, Sarah Herndon Professor of English, Florida State University; Editor, Journal of Beckett Studies.Table of ContentsContents: Preface; Introduction: Self-Organisation in the Middle of Chaos; Philosophical Notions; The Message of the Medium -- Theatrical Techniques; The Poetics of Offstage; The Radioplays; "Spirit Made Light" -- Film and TV Plays; Godot -- Resolution or Revolution?; I's and Eyes: A Hermeneutical Circle; Epilogue: Six She's and other Not I Proxies; Index.
£27.06
