Modern British Verse Drama and the Christian Tradition

Modern British Verse Drama and the Christian Tradition PDF Author: William V. Spanos
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description

Modern British Verse Drama and the Christian Tradition

Modern British Verse Drama and the Christian Tradition PDF Author: William V. Spanos
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description


Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015

Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015 PDF Author: Irene Morra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147258015X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015 provides a critical and historical exploration of a tradition of modern dramatic creativity that has received very little scholarly attention. Exploring the emergence of a distinctly modern verse drama at the turn of the century and its development into the twenty-first, it counters common assumptions that the form is a marginal, fundamentally outdated curiosity. Through an examination of the extensive and diverse engagement of literary and theatrical writers, directors and musicians, Irene Morra identifies in modern verse drama a consistent and often prominent attempt to expand upon, revitalize, and redefine the contemporary English stage. Dramatists discussed include Stephen Phillips, Gordon Bottomley, John Masefield, James Elroy Flecker, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ronald Duncan, Christopher Fry, John Arden, Anne Ridler, Tony Harrison, Steven Berkoff, Caryl Churchill, and Mike Bartlett. The book explores the negotiation of these dramatists with the changing position of verse drama in relation to constructions of national and communal audience, aesthetic challenge, and dramatic heritage. Key to the study is the self-conscious positioning of many of these dramatists in relation to an assumed mainstream tradition – and the various critical responses that that positioning has provoked. The study advocates for a scholarly revaluation of what must be identified as an influential and overlooked tradition of aesthetic challenge and creativity.

The Bible and Modern British Drama

The Bible and Modern British Drama PDF Author: Mary F. Brewer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000691519
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
The Bible and Modern British Drama: 1930 to the Present Day is the first full-length study to explore how playwrights in the modern period have adapted popular biblical stories, such as Abraham and Isaac, Moses and the Exodus from Egypt, and the life and death of Jesus, for the stage. The book offers detailed and accessible interpretations of the work of well-known dramatists such as Christopher Fry, Howard Brenton, and Steven Berkoff, alongside the work of writers whose plays have been neglected in recent criticism, such as James Bridie and Laurence Housman. The drama is analysed within the context of changes in religious belief and practice over the course of the modern period in Britain, comparing plays that approach the Bible from a traditional religious perspective with those that offer alternative viewpoints on the text, including the voices of gay, feminist, black, Jewish, and Muslim dramatists. In doing so, the author offers a broad and in-depth exploration that is grounded in current scholarship, ranging from the past to present, across boundaries of race and gender. Ideal for students, researchers, and general readers interested in understanding how the Bible has served as an important source text for British playwrights in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, The Bible and Modern British Drama shows how Bible-based drama has been influential in creating and disseminating ideas of what constitutes a "good" life, both on an individual and social level.

Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Volume 2, Symbolism, Surrealism and the Absurd

Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Volume 2, Symbolism, Surrealism and the Absurd PDF Author: J. L. Styan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521296298
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Jarry - Garcia Lorca - Satre - Camus - Beckett - Ritual theatre and Jean Genet - Fringe theatre in Britain__

The Christian Tradition in Modern British Verse Drama

The Christian Tradition in Modern British Verse Drama PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description


English Drama of the Early Modern Period 1890-1940

English Drama of the Early Modern Period 1890-1940 PDF Author: Jean Chothia
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315504200
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The period 1890-1940 was a particularly rich and influential phase in the development of modern English theatre: the age of Wilde and Shaw and a generation of influential actors and managers from Irving and Terry to Guilgud and Olivier. Jean Chothia's study is in two parts beginning with a portrait of the period, setting the narrative context and considering the dramatic social and cultural changes at work during this time. It then focuses on some of the main themes in the theatre, from Shaw and comedy, to the rise of political and radio drama, providing an interpretative framework for the period. This volume will be of great benefit to students and academics of English literature and drama, as it covers the work of the major dramatists of the period as well as considering the dramatic output of literary figures, such as James, Eliot and Lawrence.

English Drama Since 1940

English Drama Since 1940 PDF Author: David Ian Rabey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317875397
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
English Drama Since 1940 considers the bids of successive post-war dramatists to find language and images of remorseless disclosure, appropriate to the public manifestation of sensed crisis and the interrogation of the ideal of renewal. This book introduces the period and its discourse whilst redefining them, to give proper consideration to developments of themes, styles, concerns and contexts from the 80s to the present. The book offers succinct and analytical introductions to the work of 60 dramatists, whilst arguing for (re)appraisal of many dates critical perspectives, in order to stimulate further argument in the field.

Twentieth Century Drama

Twentieth Century Drama PDF Author: Simon Trussler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 134917064X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
A compendium of information on all the main events, individuals, political groupings and issues of the 20th century. It provides a guide to current thinking on important historical topics and personalities within the period, and offers a guide to further reading.

T. S. Eliot and the Ideology of Four Quartets

T. S. Eliot and the Ideology of Four Quartets PDF Author: John Xiros Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521496292
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Criticism of Eliot has ignored the public dimension of his life and work. His poetry is often seen as the private record of an internal spiritual struggle. Professor Cooper shows how Eliot deliberately addressed a North Atlantic 'mandarinate' fearful of social disintegration during the politically turbulent 1930s. Almost immediately following publication, Four Quartets was accorded canonical status as a work that promised a personal harmony divorced from the painful disharmonies of the emerging postwar world. Cooper connects Eliot's careers as banker, director and editor to a much wider cultural agenda. He aimed to reinforce established social structures during a period of painful political transition. This powerful and original study re-establishes the public context in which Eliot's work was received and understood. It will become an essential reference work for all interested in a wider understanding of Eliot and of Anglo-American cultural relations.

Staging the Lyric

Staging the Lyric PDF Author: Sarah Berry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350420409
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Verse drama is not a dead form, but very much alive on the contemporary stage. Drawing on plays from throughout the English-speaking world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Caribbean, Staging the Lyric seeks to explain the 21st-century resurgence of Anglophone verse drama, tracing it back to an experimental impulse that is present in the modernist verse drama of a century ago. Covering major writers including Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, Dorothy Sayers, Djuna Barnes, and Ntozake Shange, it also encompasses lesser known and more recent poets and playwrights. This modern verse drama differs from its ancient and Elizabethan antecedents as it is understood not as a genre in its own right, but as a hybrid of the lyric and the dramatic. Both modernist and contemporary writers take advantage of this hybridity as fertile ground for experimentation. While they differ in their ideology and form, this book contends that they are united by exploring the relationship between lyric and dramatic elements on stage and what these two different modes afford. To demonstrate this continuity, it traces a genealogy from contemporary plays by Joanna Laurens, Joyelle McSweeney, and David Grieg back to W.B. Yeats, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, and W.H. Auden, to reveal that the tensions that animate verse drama have stayed the same, even as the strategies for staging them have evolved. The book is divided into three sections-'Voice,' 'Words,' and 'Time'-each treating one feature that has been used to define the lyric. Within these sections, the chapters compare contemporary plays with modernist ones that experiment with the same point of tension between the lyric and the dramatic.