Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama

Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama PDF Author: Jeanette R. Malkin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521383358
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book considers a spectrum of post-war plays in which characters are created, coerced and destroyed by language.

Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama

Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama PDF Author: Jeanette R. Malkin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521383358
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book considers a spectrum of post-war plays in which characters are created, coerced and destroyed by language.

Words as Swords: Verbal Violence as a Construction of Authority in Renaissance and Contemporary English Drama

Words as Swords: Verbal Violence as a Construction of Authority in Renaissance and Contemporary English Drama PDF Author: Senlen Sila
Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
ISBN: 3838259823
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Verbal violence, as a sophisticated means of persuasion and manipulation, is as effective on the stage as physical violence. Since the destructive effects of verbal violence are less recognized and long-term, it is a vital instrument for constructing power and authority. Sıla Şenlen tackles this subject in Renaissance and contemporary English drama. In Renaissance tragedies composed in blank-verse such as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Part I, and Shakespeare’s Richard III, political power is identified and matched with a powerful rhetorical style. Almost all of the battles in such plays are fought verbally rather than physically on the stage. In these verbal duels or battles, competent speakers such as Tamburlaine and Richard III exploit the frontiers of deception, manipulate, abuse and destroy their opponents with low verbal competence through verbal violence. Thus, a parallel is drawn between rhetorical skills and military power, and between ‘word’ and ‘sword’. In contemporary English plays, the violence of daily language not only contributes to the creation of a realistic spectacle, but also –and more importantly– to the process of replacing free critical thinking by automatically preconceived patterns of thought and speech. Institutions and related discourses function to set up norms or standards against which people are defined, categorized, judged and punished. In Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party and Anthony Neilson’s The Censor, verbal violence in the form of daily language is not only deployed to construct authority, dominate and ‘standardize’ subjects, but also to deconstruct and defy authority.

David Mamet and American Macho

David Mamet and American Macho PDF Author: Arthur Holmberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521620643
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
What does it mean to be an American man? Holmberg demonstrates how David Mamet's plays explore complex issues of masculinity.

The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama

The Grotesque in Contemporary Anglophone Drama PDF Author: Ondřej Pilný
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137513187
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Grotesque features have been among the chief characteristics of drama in English since the 1990s. This new book examines the varieties of the grotesque in the work of some of the most original playwrights of the last three decades (including Enda Walsh, Philip Ridley, Tim Crouch and Suzan-Lori Parks), focusing in particular on ethical and political issues that arise from the use of the grotesque.

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two

Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume Two PDF Author: Philip A. Greasley
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253021162
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1074

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Book Description
The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Memory-theater and Postmodern Drama

Memory-theater and Postmodern Drama PDF Author: Jeanette R. Malkin
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472110377
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Provides a new way of defining--and understanding--postmodern drama

Twentieth-Century Drama Dialogue as Ordinary Talk

Twentieth-Century Drama Dialogue as Ordinary Talk PDF Author: Susan Mandala
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351877240
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In this book, Susan Mandala offers a series of in-depth investigations into how the dialogue of four modern plays 'works' with respect to the pragmatic and discoursal norms postulated for ordinary conversation. After an account of the often-heated debates between linguists and critics concerning the analysis of drama dialogue as talk, four plays are considered: Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, Arnold Wesker's Roots, Terence Rattigan's In Praise of Love, and Alan Ayckbourn's Just Between Ourselves. For readers unfamiliar with linguistic approaches to talk, a chapter outlining the major frameworks used in the analysis of the plays is also included. By considering both linguistic and literary perspectives, this book extends the boundaries of traditional criticism and shows how the linguistic study of conversation can contribute to our understanding of dramatic dialogue.

Staging the Holocaust

Staging the Holocaust PDF Author: Claude Schumacher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521624152
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
'To portray the Holocaust, one has to create a work of art', says Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah. However, can the Holocaust be turned into theatre? Is it possible to portray on stage events that, by their monstrosity, defy human comprehension? These are the questions addressed by the playwrights and the scholars featured in this book. Their essays present and analyse plays performed in Israel, America, France, Italy, Poland and, of course, Germany. The style of presentation ranges from docudramas to avant-garde performances, from realistic impersonation of historical figures to provocative and nightmarish spectacles. The book is illustrated with original production photographs and some rare drawings and documents; it also contains an important descriptive bibliography of more than two hundred Holocaust plays.

Institutional Violence

Institutional Violence PDF Author: Deane Curtin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004459022
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
Violence can be physical and psychological. It can characterize personal actions, forms of group activity, and abiding social and political policy. This book includes all of these aspects within its focus on institutional forms of violence. Institution is also a broad category, ranging from formal arrangements such as the military, the criminal code, the death penalty and prison system, to more amorphous but systemic situations indicated by parenting, poverty, sexism, work, and racism. Violence is as complex as the human beings who resort to it; its institutional forms pervade our relational lives. We are all participants in it as victims and perpetrators. The chapters in this book were written in the hope that violence can be explicated, even if not fully understood, and that such clarification can help us in devising less violent forms of living, even if it does not lead to its total abolition. The studies bring new aspects of violence to light and offer a number of suggestions for its remedy.

American Communities: Between the Popular and the Political

American Communities: Between the Popular and the Political PDF Author: Lukas Etter
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
ISBN: 3823391518
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Given the political relevance of the topic of community and the apparent volatility of its meanings, it is necessary to take time and create spaces for contemplation. How can theories of community be usefully applied to various forms of cultural production? How do notions of communitas affect representations as well as critiques of society and social developments? Based on a selection of papers given at the biennial conference of the Swiss Association for North American Studies in late 2016, this collection approaches discourses on literary texts and other cultural products from such angles as age studies, popular seriality, sustainability, and ecocriticism. While focused on community in contemporary American Studies, the articles in this collection also take into account some of the developments and issues surrounding community at a moment of heightened sensitivity towards this topic beyond academia.