Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture

Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture PDF Author: John Orr
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349215627
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.

Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture

Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture PDF Author: John Orr
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349215627
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.

The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy

The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy PDF Author: Verna A. Foster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885340
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Focusing on European tragicomedy from the early modern period to the theatre of the absurd, Verna Foster here argues for the independence of tragicomedy as a genre that perceives and communicates human experience differently from the various forms of tragedy, comedy, and the drame (serious drama that is neither comic nor tragic). Foster posits that, in the sense of the dramaturgical and emotional fusion of tragic and comic elements to create a distinguishable new genre, tragicomedy has emerged only twice in the history of drama. She argues that tragicomedy first emerged and was controversial in the Renaissance; and that it has in modern times replaced tragedy itself as the most serious and moving of all dramatic genres. In the first section of the book, the author analyzes the name 'tragicomedy' and the genre's problems of identity; then goes on to explore early modern tragicomedies by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger. A transitional chapter addresses cognate genres. The final section of the book focuses on modern tragicomedies by Ibsen, Chekhov, Synge, O'Casey, Williams, Ionesco, Beckett and Pinter. By exploring dramaturgical similarities between early modern and modern tragicomedies, Foster demonstrates the persistence of tragicomedy's generic markers and provides a more precise conceptual framework for the genre than has so far been available.

Modern Tragicomedy and the British Tradition

Modern Tragicomedy and the British Tradition PDF Author: Richard Dutton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


The Politics of Tragicomedy

The Politics of Tragicomedy PDF Author: Gordon McMullan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000350088
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After offers a series of sophisticated and powerful readings of tragicomedy from Shakespeare’s late plays to the drama of the Interregnum. Rejecting both the customary chronological span bounded by the years 1603-42 (which presumes dramatic activity stopped with the closing of the theatres) and the negative critical attitudes that have dogged the study of tragicomedy, the essays in this collection examine a series of issues central to the possibility of a politics for the genre. Individual essays offer important contributions to continuing debates over the role of the drama in the years preceding the Civil War, the colonial contexts of The Tempest, the political character of Jonson’s late plays, and the agency of women as public and theatre actors. The introduction presents a strong challenge to previous definitions of tragicomedy in the English context, and the collection as a whole is characterized by its rejection of absolutist strategies for reading tragicomedy. This collection will prove essential reading for all with an interest in the politics of Renaissance drama; for specialists in the work of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson; for those interested in genre and dramatic forms; and for historians of early Stuart England.

Interpreting Events

Interpreting Events PDF Author: Paul Hernadi
Publisher: Ithaca : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Since World War I, Paul Hernadi says, a new kind of historical drama has emerged--one in which history is conspicuously ficitonalized. In this book, Hernadi looks closely at developments in the genre of historical drama since 1920, showing how some of the most successful plays of the twentieth century have underscored the parallels between storytelling and the telling of history.

The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett

The Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett PDF Author: Charles A. Carpenter
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 144118421X
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 525

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Book Description


French Twentieth Bibliography

French Twentieth Bibliography PDF Author: Douglas W. Alden
Publisher: Susquehanna University Press
ISBN: 9780945636861
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
This series of bibliographical references is one of the most important tools for research in modern and contemporary French literature. No other bibliography represents the scholarly activities and publications of these fields as completely.

Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy PDF Author: Brean Hammond
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350144320
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
This succinct authoritative book offers readers an overview of the origins, characteristics, and changing status of tragicomedy from the 17th century to the present. It explores the work of some of the key English and Irish playwrights associated with the form, the influence of Italian and Spanish theorist-playwrights and the importance of translations of Pierre Corneille's Le Cid. At the turn of the 17th century, English dramatists such as John Marston, John Fletcher, and William Shakespeare began experimenting with plays that mixed elements of tragedy and comedy, producing a blended mode that they themselves called 'tragicomedy'. This book begins by examining the sources of their inspiration and the theatrical achievement that they hoped to gain by confronting an audience with plays that defied the plot and character expectations of 'pure' comedy and tragedy. It goes on to show how, reacting to French models, John Dryden, Shakespeare 'improvers' and other English playwrights developed the form while sowing the seeds of its own vulnerability to parody and obsolescence in the eighteenth century. Discussing nineteenth-century melodrama as in some respects a resurrection of tragicomedy, the final chapter concentrates on plays by Ibsen, Chekhov, and Beckett as examples of the form being revived to create theatrical modes that more adequately represent the perceived complexity of experience.

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680

Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680 PDF Author: Christopher N. Warren
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191030058
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580-1680 is a literary history of international law in the age of Shakespeare, Milton, Grotius, and Hobbes. Seeking to revise the ways scholars understand early modern English literature in relation to the history of international law, it argues that scholars of law and literature have tacitly accepted specious but politically consequential assumptions about whether international law is "real" law. Literature and the Law of Nations shows how major writers of the English Renaissance deployed genres like epic, tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and history to solidify the canonical subjects and objects of modern international law. By demonstrating how Renaissance literary genres informed modern categories like public international law, private international law, international legal personality, and human rights, the book over its seven chapters and conclusion helps early modern literary scholars think anew about the legal entailments of genre and scholars in law and literature long accustomed to treating all law with a single broad brush better confront the distinct complexities, fault lines, and variegated histories at the heart of international law.

Reader's Guide to Literature in English

Reader's Guide to Literature in English PDF Author: Mark Hawkins-Dady
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135314179
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1024

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Book Description
Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.