Author: David Bradby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134188269
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Book Description
This book is the only introductory text to Genet in English, offering an overview of this key figure in defining and understanding twentieth-century theatre. The authors provide a comprehensive account of Genet's key plays and productions, his early life and his writing for and beyond the theatre.
The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet
Author: Gene A. Plunka
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838634615
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366
Book Description
"In this book, Gene A. Plunka argues that the most important single element that solidifies all of Genet's work is the concept of metamorphosis. Genet's plays and prose demonstrate the transition from game playing to the establishment of one's identity through a state of risk taking that develops from solitude. However, risk taking per se is not as important as the rite of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner's work in ethnography is used as a focal point for the examination of rites of passage in Genet's dramas." "Rejecting society, Genet has allied himself with peripheral groups, marginal men, and outcasts--scapegoats who lack power in society. Much of their effort is spent in revolt or direct opposition in mainstream society that sees them as objects to be abused. As an outcast or marginal man, Genet solved his problem of identity through artistic creation and metamorphosis. Likewise, Genet's protagonists are outcasts searching for positive value in a society over which they have no control; they always appear to be the victims or scapegoats. As outcasts, Genet's protagonists establish their identities by first willing their actions and being proud to do so." "Unfortunately, man's sense of Being is constantly undermined by society and the way individuals react to roles, norms, and values. Roles are the products of carefully defined and codified years of positively sanctioned institutional behavior. According to Genet, role playing limits individual freedom, stifles creativity, and impedes differentiation. Genet equates role playing with stagnant bourgeois society that imitates rather than invents; the latter is a word Genet often uses to urge his protagonists into a state of productive metamorphosis. Imitation versus invention is the underlying dialectic between bourgeois society and outcasts that is omnipresent in virtually all of Genet's works." "Faced with rejection, poverty, oppression, and degradation, Genet's outcasts often escape their horrible predicaments by living in a world of illusion that consists of ceremony, game playing, narcissism, sexual and secret rites, or political charades. Like children, Genet's ostracized individuals play games to imitate a world that they can not enter. Essentially, the play acting becomes catharsis for an oppressed group that is otherwise confined to the lower stratum of society." "Role players and outcasts who try to find an identity through cathartic game playing never realize their potential in Genet's world. Instead, Genet is interested in outcasts who immerse themselves in solitude and create their own sense of dignity free from external control. Most important, these isolated individuals may initially play games, yet they ultimately experience metamorphosis from a world of rites, charades, and rituals to a type of "sainthood" where dignity and nobility reign. The apotheosis is achieved through a distinct act of conscious revolt designed to condemn the risk taker to a degraded life of solitude totally distinct from society's norms and values." --Book Jacket.
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838634615
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366
Book Description
"In this book, Gene A. Plunka argues that the most important single element that solidifies all of Genet's work is the concept of metamorphosis. Genet's plays and prose demonstrate the transition from game playing to the establishment of one's identity through a state of risk taking that develops from solitude. However, risk taking per se is not as important as the rite of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner's work in ethnography is used as a focal point for the examination of rites of passage in Genet's dramas." "Rejecting society, Genet has allied himself with peripheral groups, marginal men, and outcasts--scapegoats who lack power in society. Much of their effort is spent in revolt or direct opposition in mainstream society that sees them as objects to be abused. As an outcast or marginal man, Genet solved his problem of identity through artistic creation and metamorphosis. Likewise, Genet's protagonists are outcasts searching for positive value in a society over which they have no control; they always appear to be the victims or scapegoats. As outcasts, Genet's protagonists establish their identities by first willing their actions and being proud to do so." "Unfortunately, man's sense of Being is constantly undermined by society and the way individuals react to roles, norms, and values. Roles are the products of carefully defined and codified years of positively sanctioned institutional behavior. According to Genet, role playing limits individual freedom, stifles creativity, and impedes differentiation. Genet equates role playing with stagnant bourgeois society that imitates rather than invents; the latter is a word Genet often uses to urge his protagonists into a state of productive metamorphosis. Imitation versus invention is the underlying dialectic between bourgeois society and outcasts that is omnipresent in virtually all of Genet's works." "Faced with rejection, poverty, oppression, and degradation, Genet's outcasts often escape their horrible predicaments by living in a world of illusion that consists of ceremony, game playing, narcissism, sexual and secret rites, or political charades. Like children, Genet's ostracized individuals play games to imitate a world that they can not enter. Essentially, the play acting becomes catharsis for an oppressed group that is otherwise confined to the lower stratum of society." "Role players and outcasts who try to find an identity through cathartic game playing never realize their potential in Genet's world. Instead, Genet is interested in outcasts who immerse themselves in solitude and create their own sense of dignity free from external control. Most important, these isolated individuals may initially play games, yet they ultimately experience metamorphosis from a world of rites, charades, and rituals to a type of "sainthood" where dignity and nobility reign. The apotheosis is achieved through a distinct act of conscious revolt designed to condemn the risk taker to a degraded life of solitude totally distinct from society's norms and values." --Book Jacket.
Jean Genet
Author: David Bradby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134188269
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Book Description
This book is the only introductory text to Genet in English, offering an overview of this key figure in defining and understanding twentieth-century theatre. The authors provide a comprehensive account of Genet's key plays and productions, his early life and his writing for and beyond the theatre.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134188269
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 179
Book Description
This book is the only introductory text to Genet in English, offering an overview of this key figure in defining and understanding twentieth-century theatre. The authors provide a comprehensive account of Genet's key plays and productions, his early life and his writing for and beyond the theatre.
Jean Genet
Author: Barbara L. Gerber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 550
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 550
Book Description
Jean Genet
Author: Stephen Barber
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861895933
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
An engaging and challenging introduction to Jean Genet, this concise biography of the French writer and his work cuts directly to the intersection of thought and life that was essential to Genet's creativity. Arguing that Genet's life was an extraordinary spectacle in which the themes of his most revolutionary works were played out, Stephen Barber gives both the work and its singular inspiration in Genet's life their full due. Abandoned, arrested, and repeatedly incarcerated, Genet, who died in 1986, led a life that could best be described as a tour of the underworld of the twentieth century. Similarly, Genet's work is recognized by its nearly obsessive and often savage treatment of certain recurring themes. Sex, desire, death, oppression, domination-these ideas, central to Genet's artistic project, can be seen as preoccupations that arose directly from the artist's travels, imprisonments, sexual and emotional relationships, and political engagements and protests. This trenchant volume focuses directly on the moments in Genet's life in which those preoccupations are vividly projected in his novels, theater works, and film projects. Genet's works have been hugely influential for a vast array of writers, filmmakers, choreographers, and directors, especially at moments of social crisis; thus Genet's life is not only at the root of his own work but also that of many important artists of the twentieth century. With its frank and illuminating introduction by Edmund White, Jean Genet gives readers access to this brilliant and brutal mind.
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861895933
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
An engaging and challenging introduction to Jean Genet, this concise biography of the French writer and his work cuts directly to the intersection of thought and life that was essential to Genet's creativity. Arguing that Genet's life was an extraordinary spectacle in which the themes of his most revolutionary works were played out, Stephen Barber gives both the work and its singular inspiration in Genet's life their full due. Abandoned, arrested, and repeatedly incarcerated, Genet, who died in 1986, led a life that could best be described as a tour of the underworld of the twentieth century. Similarly, Genet's work is recognized by its nearly obsessive and often savage treatment of certain recurring themes. Sex, desire, death, oppression, domination-these ideas, central to Genet's artistic project, can be seen as preoccupations that arose directly from the artist's travels, imprisonments, sexual and emotional relationships, and political engagements and protests. This trenchant volume focuses directly on the moments in Genet's life in which those preoccupations are vividly projected in his novels, theater works, and film projects. Genet's works have been hugely influential for a vast array of writers, filmmakers, choreographers, and directors, especially at moments of social crisis; thus Genet's life is not only at the root of his own work but also that of many important artists of the twentieth century. With its frank and illuminating introduction by Edmund White, Jean Genet gives readers access to this brilliant and brutal mind.
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing
Author: Hélène Cixous
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231076593
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: The School of the Dead--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; The School of Dreams--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and The School of Roots--the importance of depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231076593
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178
Book Description
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.' In a magnetic, irresistible narrative, Cixous reflects on the writing process and explores three distinct areas essential for 'great' writing: The School of the Dead--the notion that something or someone must die in order for good writing to be born; The School of Dreams--the crucial role dreams play in literary inspiration and output; and The School of Roots--the importance of depth in the 'nether realms' in all aspects of writing. Cixous's love of language and passion for the written word is evident on every page. Her emotive style draws heavily on the writers she most admires: the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the Austrian novelists Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard, Dostoyevsky and, most of all, Kafka.
Jean Cocteau
Author: Claude Arnaud
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300182163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1039
Book Description
This passionate and monumental biography reassesses the life and legacy of one of the most significant cultural figures of the twentieth century Unevenly respected, easily hated, almost always suspected of being inferior to his reputation, Jean Cocteau has often been thought of as a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. In this landmark biography, Claude Arnaud thoroughly contests this characterization, as he celebrates Cocteau’s “fragile genius—a combination almost unlivable in art” but in his case so fertile. Arnaud narrates the life of this legendary French novelist, poet, playwright, director, filmmaker, and designer who, as a young man, pretended to be a sort of a god, but who died as a humble and exhausted craftsman. His moving and compassionate account examines the nature of Cocteau’s chameleon-like genius, his romantic attachments, his controversial politics, and his intimate involvement with many of the century’s leading artistic lights, including Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams. Already published to great critical acclaim in France, Arnaud’s penetrating and deeply researched work reveals a uniquely gifted artist while offering a magnificent cultural history of the twentieth century.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300182163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1039
Book Description
This passionate and monumental biography reassesses the life and legacy of one of the most significant cultural figures of the twentieth century Unevenly respected, easily hated, almost always suspected of being inferior to his reputation, Jean Cocteau has often been thought of as a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. In this landmark biography, Claude Arnaud thoroughly contests this characterization, as he celebrates Cocteau’s “fragile genius—a combination almost unlivable in art” but in his case so fertile. Arnaud narrates the life of this legendary French novelist, poet, playwright, director, filmmaker, and designer who, as a young man, pretended to be a sort of a god, but who died as a humble and exhausted craftsman. His moving and compassionate account examines the nature of Cocteau’s chameleon-like genius, his romantic attachments, his controversial politics, and his intimate involvement with many of the century’s leading artistic lights, including Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams. Already published to great critical acclaim in France, Arnaud’s penetrating and deeply researched work reveals a uniquely gifted artist while offering a magnificent cultural history of the twentieth century.
New Tragedy and Comedy in France, 1945-70
Author: Peter Norrish
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349067806
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
This is a study about the reshaping of tragedy and comedy in serious French drama in the quarter century following World War II. It offers an introduction to the most important plays of the period, which include those of Sartre, Arrabal, Beckett, Ionesco, Camus, Montherlant, Adamov and Genet.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349067806
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
This is a study about the reshaping of tragedy and comedy in serious French drama in the quarter century following World War II. It offers an introduction to the most important plays of the period, which include those of Sartre, Arrabal, Beckett, Ionesco, Camus, Montherlant, Adamov and Genet.
New Tragedy and Comedy in France, 1945-1970
Author: Peter Norrish
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780389207467
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Contents: Introduction: New Tragedy and Comedy; The Background: From^R La Machine infernale to Huis clos; More Sartre and Camus: Drama, Tragedy and Philosophy; Henry de Montherlant: Tragedy and Morality; Samuel Beckett: New Tragedy; EugÈne Ionesco: New Comedy; Arthur Adamov: Black Satire, Dreams and Politics; Jean Genet: Tragic Masquerades; Fernando Arrabal: Tragic Farce; Conclusion: The Death of Comody?; Select Bibliography; Index
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780389207467
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
Contents: Introduction: New Tragedy and Comedy; The Background: From^R La Machine infernale to Huis clos; More Sartre and Camus: Drama, Tragedy and Philosophy; Henry de Montherlant: Tragedy and Morality; Samuel Beckett: New Tragedy; EugÈne Ionesco: New Comedy; Arthur Adamov: Black Satire, Dreams and Politics; Jean Genet: Tragic Masquerades; Fernando Arrabal: Tragic Farce; Conclusion: The Death of Comody?; Select Bibliography; Index
Roger Blin and Twentieth-Century Playwrights
Author: Odette Aslan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521224406
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
From her own knowledge of Blin's rigorous working habits, from interviews with close associates, and Blin's own rare statements, production notes and drawings, Odette Aslan has pieced together the history of Blin's work as actor, critic, and director, his relationship with playwrights and actors, and how he struggled against obstacles to stage works by then unknown authors and bring out the peculiar qualities of the plays he chose.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521224406
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 206
Book Description
From her own knowledge of Blin's rigorous working habits, from interviews with close associates, and Blin's own rare statements, production notes and drawings, Odette Aslan has pieced together the history of Blin's work as actor, critic, and director, his relationship with playwrights and actors, and how he struggled against obstacles to stage works by then unknown authors and bring out the peculiar qualities of the plays he chose.
The Play Within the Play
Author: Gerhard Fischer
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042022574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 478
Book Description
The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play. The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting - from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy - but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play: as ultimate affirmation of the 'self' (the 'Hamlet paradigm'), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042022574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 478
Book Description
The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play. The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting - from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy - but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play: as ultimate affirmation of the 'self' (the 'Hamlet paradigm'), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.