Semiotics at the Circus

Semiotics at the Circus PDF Author: Paul Bouissac
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110218291
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Semiotics is long on theoretical, often obscure discourses, but short on applications that demonstrate with clarity the applicability of its methods. This book confronts a challenging object, the circus, and endeavors to describe its performances in ways that explain how circus acts produce meaning and cause a deep emotional involvement for their audiences. The approach is not top-down, such as would be a method that would dogmatically apply a particular theory to fully explain the phenomena in terms of this theory alone. Epistemologically, this book is an example of the bottom-up strategy, which consists of considering first the objects and heuristically calling upon methodological resources in a broad theoretical array to come to grips with the problems that are encountered. Any circus act is a complex event that has cognitive and emotional dimensions. It is also a part of a history and an institution, and cannot be abstracted from its cultural and sociological contexts. Thus the range of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches must include structural semiotics, biosemiotics, pragmatics, socio-semiotics, cultural anthropology, the cognitive sciences, the psychology and sociology of emotions, to name only the most important. But the ultimate focus of this book is to enable the readers to better understand the meaning of circus performances and to appreciate the skills and creativity of this traditional popular art, which constantly renews itself from generation to generation.

Emeline at the Circus

Emeline at the Circus PDF Author: Marjorie Priceman
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0307792951
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
From Caldecott Honor artist and author of the best-selling How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World comes a hilarious picture book romp about the things you can learn and the fun you can have at the circus. When Emeline's teacher, Miss Splinter, takes the second grade on a field trip to the circus, she's careful to make sure it's a learning experience. While she reads -- the text of the book consists of her "lessons" -- the pictures show Emeline getting mixed up in the performances in the circus ring. She becomes a lion tamer, an acrobat, a trapeze artist, and more, before Miss Splinter realizes what's going on. Marjorie Priceman's vibrant, saturated paintings make this dazzling sight gag a feast for the eye. Children will applaud Emeline, laugh out loud at Miss Splinter, and painlessly soak up a few facts about animals, acrobats, and circuses along the way.

Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus PDF Author: Angela Carter
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409015335
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
'Raunchy, raucous...a rich, turn of the 19th century world, which reeks of human and animal variety' The Times Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake? Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia. **One of the BBC’s 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Semiotics at the Circus

Semiotics at the Circus PDF Author: Paul Bouissac
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110218291
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
Semiotics is long on theoretical, often obscure discourses, but short on applications that demonstrate with clarity the applicability of its methods. This book confronts a challenging object, the circus, and endeavors to describe its performances in ways that explain how circus acts produce meaning and cause a deep emotional involvement for their audiences. The approach is not top-down, such as would be a method that would dogmatically apply a particular theory to fully explain the phenomena in terms of this theory alone. Epistemologically, this book is an example of the bottom-up strategy, which consists of considering first the objects and heuristically calling upon methodological resources in a broad theoretical array to come to grips with the problems that are encountered. Any circus act is a complex event that has cognitive and emotional dimensions. It is also a part of a history and an institution, and cannot be abstracted from its cultural and sociological contexts. Thus the range of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches must include structural semiotics, biosemiotics, pragmatics, socio-semiotics, cultural anthropology, the cognitive sciences, the psychology and sociology of emotions, to name only the most important. But the ultimate focus of this book is to enable the readers to better understand the meaning of circus performances and to appreciate the skills and creativity of this traditional popular art, which constantly renews itself from generation to generation.

The Cambridge Companion to the Circus

The Cambridge Companion to the Circus PDF Author: Gillian Arrighi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108617689
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to the Circus provides a complete guide for students, scholars, teachers, researchers, and practitioners who are seeking perspectives on the foundations and evolution of the modern circus, the contemporary extent of circus studies, and the specialised literature available to support further enquiries. The volume brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars working across the multi-disciplinary domain of circus studies to present a clear overview of the specialised histories, aesthetics and distinctive performances of the modern circus. In sixteen commissioned essays, it covers the origins in commercial equestrian performance during the late-eighteenth century to contemporary inflections of circus arts in major international festivals, educational environments, and social justice settings.

Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse

Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse PDF Author: Magali Cornier Michael
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791430156
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Michael analyzes the intersections between feminist politics and postmodern aesthetics as demonstrated in recent Anglo-American fiction. While much has been written on various aspects of postmodernism and postmodern fiction and of feminism and feminist fiction, very little attention has been given to the postmodern aesthetic strategies that surface in post-World War II feminist fiction. Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse examines ways in which many widely read and acclaimed novels with feminist impulses engage and transform subversive aesthetic strategies usually associated with postmodern fiction to strengthen their feminist political edge. The author discusses many examples of recent feminist-postmodern fiction, and explores in greater depth Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. She shows that feminist-postmodern fiction's emphasis on the material historical situation--the link to activist politics and commitment to enacting concrete changes in the world, and thus the need to reach a large reading public--often results in a blending and transformation of postmodern and realist aesthetic forms. Moreover, feminist fiction uses deconstructive strategies not only to disrupt the status quo but also to create a space for reconstruction, particularly of recreating new forms of female subjectivities and feminist aesthetics.

The Novel and the Menagerie

The Novel and the Menagerie PDF Author: Kurt Koenigsberger
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210570
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
"The first comprehensive account of the relation of collections of imperial beasts to narrative practices in England, The Novel and the Menagerie explores an array of imaginative responses to the empire as a dominant, shaping factor in English daily life. Kurt Koenigsberger argues that domestic English novels and collections of zoological exotica (especially zoos, circuses, traveling menageries, and colonial and imperial exhibitions) share important aesthetic strategies and cultural logics: novels about English daily life and displays featuring collections of exotic animals both strive to relate Englishness to a larger empire conceived as an integrated whole." "Koenigsberger's investigations range from readings of novels by authors such as Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Salman Rushdie, and Angela Carter to analyses of ballads, handbills, broadsides, and memoirs of showmen. Attending closely to the collective English practices of imagining and delineating the empire as a whole, The Novel and the Menagerie works at the juncture of literary criticism, colonial discourse studies, and cultural analysis to historicize the notion of totality in the theory and practice of the English novel. In exploring the shapes of the novel in England and of the English institutions that collected exotic animals, it offers fresh readings of familiar literary texts and opens up new ways of understanding the character of imperial Englishness across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."--BOOK JACKET.

Hearings

Hearings PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Finance
Languages : en
Pages : 1238

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Book Description


Hearings

Hearings PDF Author: United States. Congress. House
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 2748

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Antiquity Explained, and Represented in Sculptures

Antiquity Explained, and Represented in Sculptures PDF Author: Bernard de Montfaucon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Archaeology
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Wisconsin Library Bulletin

Wisconsin Library Bulletin PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Libraries
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description