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Subject Area: Drama
Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya Q.2020 1-4955-0816-1 76 pages
Dr. Nadya Chishty-Mujahid wrote a Pakistani college-based play in English. I had been thinking about the art of fiction and thought that an annotated version of the attached play would make for a good monograph-with detailed explanatory notes, a few translations.
Chávez, Marzena
2001 0-7734-7533-8 136 pages
Lerzundi, Patricio C.
2008 0-7734-5048-3 164 pages
This work makes available for the first time an annotated critical edition of an early seventeenth-century Golden Age play nearly forgotten in the pantheon of Chilean literary history. In Spanish.
Gil y Zárate, Don Antionia
2008 0-7734-4908-6 140 pages
The first English translation published of Carlos Segundo, el Hechizado. The play Charles the Second, the Bewitched was lauded as one of the great Romantic dramas, while at the same time, viewed as scandalous for dealing with the incompetence of the royalty and the policies of the Catholic Church.
Hawes, Jane
1994 0-7734-9092-2 156 pages
This work analyzes how Verdi produced what is not only a monumental piece of music, but a remarkably effective and faithful adaptation. It examines how Verdi (and his librettist, Arrigo Boito) translated from speech to music and discusses what is required generally for a good adaptation. The study is primarily musical, though it examines literary matters as well. It examines principal characters and their relationships, the arias, the structure, and differences and similarities between Verdi and his source, Shakespeare.
Grote, Georg
2003 0-7734-6811-0 256 pages
The period between the fall of Parnell in 1890 and the Easter Rising 1916, is one of the most complex in Irish history due to the close interrelation between politics and culture. Literature played a significant role in the gestation of the modern Irish nation, and the Anglo-Irish Literary Movement led by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, and John Millington Synge became repeatedly involved in the political struggle. This book investigates the intricate relationship between writers and politics and their responsibility for the emerging radicalization of nationalism toward 1916. It also considers the question of the writers’ own involvement in the nationalist cause, and focuses on the interplay of politics, nationalism and the very human element of personality and timing in order to elucidate the mechanics of national mobilization before 1916.
Conlon, Raymond
2002 0-7734-6905-2 516 pages
A selection of Renaissance Italian, Spanish and Portuguese plays in translation, each accompanied by an introduction to the author and his works and their cultural milieu.
Cairns, Christopher
1996 0-7734-8821-9 452 pages
This volume offers newly-translated texts of three established classics of Italian Renaissance comedy, with scholarly introductions and bibliographies for each: Ariosto's seminal second play, The Supposes; Machiavelli's Mandrake; and the composition of the Sienese Intronati, The Deceived. The works are linked by documentable bond of influence, and also represent a solid chapter in the history of theatrical staging, since there are traces of evidence of idealised cityscape perspective sets for early performances of both The Supposes and The Deceived. These plays embody distinctive traditions and contributions to the genesis of European comedy.
DuBruck, Edelgard E.
1993 0-7734-9328-X 186 pages
This study examines two fields of research: German society of the fifteenth century, and its carnival comedies. This is a detailed treatment of the four classes (peasants, urban middle class, clergy, and nobility), including such aspects as health, the self and its historicity, and general rules of conduct. The German carnival plays are valuable literary texts allowing insight into fifteenth-century life. This book examines most of the 127 comedies in the Keller collection, listed in one of the indices, and provides translations of all quotations into modern English. It also contains a synoptic tabulation of the Nürnberg plays, valuable to both drama specialists and medievalists.
Harada, Hiroko
2000 0-7734-7865-5 264 pages
Against the background of post-war literary developments in Germany and Japan, this study compares several representative dramas. These playwrights attempt to come to terms with military defeat, betrayal by leaders, wartime atrocities, holocaust, blindness, passivity, guilt, collective and individual responsibility.
Putnam, Mark
2024 1-4599-1291-6 118 pages
With this book we are pleased to introduce three Spanish women writers of the twenty-first century. Each of the authors from this select group is currently writing and publishing in Spain. Here we present a selection of their works in Spanish and translated into English. It also should be mentioned that these writers also publish in a variety of genres such as novel, poetry, essay and drama.
King, Sharon D.
2003 0-7734-6722-X 304 pages
Analyzing dramas that depict the fall of, or civic upheaval in, urban centers (both historical and legendary), this book establishes the author’s concept of “city tragedy” as a subgenre of tragedy in Renaissance theatrical practice. Using some two dozen texts (some by obscure authors, some by well-known playwrights such as Shakespeare and Calderón) from about 1560 to 1650, the book traces the different modes of creation of the city as principal character of the tragedy, then examines how an expanded notion of civic sin becomes its “fatal flaw.” This study is groundbreaking not only in its definition of the term “city tragedy” but in its examination of some of the sociological themes city tragedy presents – the city’s frequent depiction as a victimized woman, individual passion’s culpability in bringing death to the masses, the use of the notion of divine favor and divine wrath in the fate of a city for propagandistic ends. Finally, this study is timely in its discussion of recent dramatized portrayals of the events of 9/11, as it demonstrates that the patterns and conventions of city tragedies of 400 years ago are the very ones we use today.
Wang, Aixue
1999 0-7734-8157-5 256 pages
Compares three pairs of plays by the Irish playwright J. M. Synge and the Chinese playwright Cao Yu, discussing some provocative dramaturgical similarities as well as profound aesthetic differences and uncovering a number of instances of Cao Yu's appropriation of Western literary models that have not been recognized before.
Wilkes, Gerald A.
2008 0-7734-4956-6 520 pages
This is an edition which calls for a re-examination of his relationship to Sir Philip Sidney and the Pembroke circle. This book contains one black and white photograph.
Vilalta, Maruxa
2006 0-7734-5973-1 312 pages
This mystery play by a contemporary Mexican dramatist premiered in 1991. It is based on the life of Saint Jerome (347-419) and the events of his times and his dedication to commenting on and translating the scriptures. The play won three awards: The Mexico Association of Drama Critics Best Play of Creative Research; The Society of Theatre Journalists Dramaturgy Prize; and the Claridades Best Play of the Year for 1991.
Knittel, Frank
1995 0-7734-8994-0 136 pages
This edition marks the first time that Mankind has been deemed worthy of a full critical examination. It lays to rest the contention that the play is obscene and crude. The evidence presented in the critical introduction, the body of the play itself, and the opinions of current scholars demonstrate that Mankind, more than any other medieval drama, is a link to the Renaissance drama immediately following. With its intricate, well-developed metrical scheme and moral and philosophical themes, it represents an artistic achievement beyond that found in the typical drama of the Middle Ages. Its occasional humor as well as its high seriousness provide a happy combination of both wit and morality.
Yang, Carol L.
2011 0-7734-1561-0 364 pages
This book is a detailed investigation of T. S. Eliot’s work in the light of Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism and carnival. It employs a new paradigm for interpreting Eliot’s work, offering new points of analysis regarding, in particular, his later works.
Drama of War in the Theatre of Anne Devlin, Marie Jones, and Christina Reid, Three Irish Playwrights
Liddy, Brenda J.2010 0-7734-3791-6 136 pages
The book is about the representation of war in the plays of Anne Devlin, Marie Jones and Christina Reid. Cumulatively, the plays demonstrate a symbiotic relationship between war and gender, showing women’s response to war as complex and diverse. The work of these three playwrights suggests that women played a much bigger part in the conflict and in the post-conflict environment than has been acknowledged.
Carpenter, Charles A.
2000 0-7734-7891-4 104 pages
This volume provides as complete a bibliographical and descriptive record as possible of English-language plays that deal directly and significantly with “the Bomb”, a code-term denoting all major aspects of the Nuclear Age that relate to atomic weapons (but not to nuclear power). Descriptions of the plays are oriented toward their content as nuclear-age dramas. The descriptions are presented in chronological order, since the plays vary in nature and number according to the nuclear situation that existed in the real world. It includes a selective chronology of that evolving situation along with the landmarks of literature and journalism that it spawned. An index of playwrights concludes the volume.
Breining, Daniel
2002 0-7734-7004-2 300 pages
This work investigates the censorship of género chico dramas, pieces which were commonly used as a conversional and didactic tool in New Spain during the first decades of colonial rule. These small theatrical representations and dramatic texts are particularly insightful to the censorial policies as developed and implemented by the ecclesiastical and viceregal authorities of New Spain. The official and personal anti-theatrical and anti-dramatic dictates, as enforced in part by Archbishop Juan de Zumàrraga and the New World Inquisition, relied heavily upon the ideals of mimesis, education, and concern for subversion of the state. Because the works generally included the use of Nahuatl, the language of the newly conquered natives of the Anahuac valley, and were performed by the Indians without Spanish supervision, they feared potential insertion of indigenous elements. Along with the hybridized qualities found in many of the pieces, this work also looks at the criticism of viceregal policies as one more reason for censoring these works and reprimanding their authors, with examples taken from the works of Hernán González de Eslava, Juan Pérez Ramírez, and Cristóbal de Llerena.
Price, Thomas F.
1992 0-7734-9897-4 364 pages
Introduces a new general theory of dramatic form, together with a detailed, practicable method for the analysis and critical understanding of plays and screenplays. The author proposes that any play or screenplay can ultimately be understood as conforming to one of just seven dynamic types, and that knowledge of the kinetic and modal signatures of these skeletal `plots' provides the key for decoding the metaphorical significance of a drama's action and imagery. Examples range from ancient Greek drama to modern opera libretti to contemporary film, and from acknowledged dramatic masterpieces to more popular works. Will help drama professionals and students better grasp a work's conception and intention, and help the non-professional audience better understand a play or movie.
Lerzundi, Patricio C.
2009 0-7734-4813-1 156 pages
This book is not only the first annotated edition of the play, El gobernador prudente by Gaspar de Avila is the third, and last, play on the deeds of Don GarcIa Hurtado de Mendoza, governor of Chile from 1557 to 1561.
Almeida, Diane M.
2000 0-7734-7693-8 120 pages
Valle-Inclán’s esperpentos are a particularly Spanish style of black comedy. This work analyses Valle-Inclán’s works, defines precisely what the term esperpento means, and what technique Valle-Inclán used to achieve his aesthetic. These techniques are demonstrated by examples from the plays themselves. The second part examines the manner in which Valle-Inclán’s esperpento blends with Buñuel’s surrealistic films, particularly Un Chien andalou, L’age d’or and Tierra Sin Pan. This book serves as a study of Spanish literature and film at the beginning of the 20th century, and as a demonstration of the great and often unacknowledged debt that the cinema owes to the theatre.
Giraldi, G. B.
2003 0-7734-6833-1 284 pages
Among Giraldi’s later plays not published since the 16th century is Eufimia, which the playwright adapted for the stage from one of his own short stories, in a new style. It combines lavish stage spectacle with a plot incorporating romantic episodes based on the poems of chivalry and resembling some of the stock ingredients of the modern Western: flight, pursuit, rescue, combat and duel. The volumes includes explanatory notes on the text and a glossary of archaic words and word-forms. The first part of the Introduction places Giraldi’s tragedy in the context of the dispute with his literary rival, Giambattista Pigna, correcting in the process some persistent misunderstandings about the chronology of events. The second part discusses the innovative aspects of the tragedy and its place in the evolution of Giraldi’s compositions for the stage
Hagen, Lisa Hall
2010 0-7734-1466-5 424 pages
This book fills a gap created when overtly politicized and polarized writing on abortion is removed. It seeks to explore the ways in which theater can serve as a particularly useful place to explore abortion.
Adams-Davis, Katie Brittain
1977 0-7734-0176-8 148 pages
Stone, Rob
2004 0-7734-6429-8 312 pages
This study explores the meaning and importance of flamenco in the works of two of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century Spanish culture, the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and the film-maker Carlos Saura. Lorca and Saura shared a fascination for flamenco as a medium for the existential ideology of the marginalized and disenfranchised and this work evaluates the development of these themes through a close, contextual study of their works, which are linked explicitly by Saura’s film adaptation of Lorca’s Bodas de sangre and, more profoundly, by their use of flamenco to express ideas of sexual and political marginalization in pre- and post-Francoist Spain respectively. The study demonstrates that an understanding of the symbolism, visual style, characters, themes and performance system of flamenco is key to a greater understanding of the social, sexual, political and existential themes in the works of Lorca and Saura, and that this in turn allows for an original and revealing analysis of the evolution of flamenco and the development of modern Spain.
Hollard, Thoron
2015 1-4955-0327-5 376 pages
The relationship between humans and dolphins has been a subject of interest since earliest times… This fascinating book explores first the classical background to Arion and his dolphin story and then its treatment by French literary and artistic figures who, in a variety of genres and forms, have recreated the story and brought out new meanings more appropriate to their particular times.”
-Chris Dearden,
Emeritus Professor of Classics,
Victoria University of Wellington ,New Zealand
Osborn, Peggy
1992 0-7734-9445-6 260 pages
This study comprises a critical edition of the complete text of Giraldi's Altile. (The play has been published only once before the present edition, in 1583, ten years after the author's death.) This edition also contains its narrative source, Giraldi's novella (Hecatommithi, II,3). Shows how Giraldi telescoped his unwieldy novella into the formal neo-classical structure of Renaissance tragedy, reinterpreting or even ignoring the precepts of Aristotle when they conflicted with his experience as a practical dramatist writing for the duke and court of Ferrara. He greatly developed the characters of his leading personages, adding an important new character-type to the cast: the first scheming and treacherous subordinate of modern tragedy. The study stresses the importance of the elements of suspense, pathos and maraviglia, and the pains Giraldi took to provide his audience with a lavish, well-staged spectacle. It also emphasizes the fact that the play was intended to convey a series of clearly-defined moral messages.
Bement, Peter
1974 0-7734-0450-3 294 pages
This essay in interpretation concentrates on Chapman's tragic themes, in the light of their development from his earliest poems though to his mature tragedies, as a key to the total meaning and significance of the plays.
Hodgart, A. Buono
1997 0-7734-8661-5 220 pages
This comparative study of Giordano Bruno's Candelaio examines a large number of theatrical authors, from the classical tradition as well as from Italian vernacular and dialect. It takes into account Bruno's recognized sources as well as unknown authors, philosophers as well as poets, playwrights as well as 'poligrafi della penna'. The study concludes that it is the polemic attack on pedantry - in the special sense attributed to it by Bruno - which constitutes the central impulse of Candelaio: a polemic against intellectual obscurantism and degenerated morals. This meaning explains and justifies, emblematically, the title itself: Candelaio is the bearer of the light of truth. Thus, by its very name, the play declares its function, to clarify and enlighten - and claims the ethical significance, as a human and social document, which makes it worth reading.
Klein, Holger
1997 0-7734-8502-3 524 pages
Part of a multi-volume series of yearbooks covering works by Shakespeare. This volume deals with film versions of "Hamlet", including topics such as Hamlet's ghost on the screen, Kenneth Branagh's interpolations in "Hamlet", Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" and Hamlet as a woman. Topics raised include comic uses of the tragedy, the portrayl of "Hamlet"'s ghost on screen and the poetic and dramatic uses of cookery in Shakespeare's plays.
Hadomi, Leah
1992 0-7734-9578-9 196 pages
This study begins with an examination of the "archi-pattern" of the Prodigal Son, then analyses the analogies and differences between this "archi-pattern" and its post-figuration in modern dramatic discourse as influenced by changes in the socio-cultural code. Six modern plays are represented: Ibsen's Ghosts, O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Pinter's The Homecoming, and Shepard's Buried Child.
Snare, Gerald
2023 1-4955-1147-2 236 pages
(Hardcover Edition) "It is almost a rule of logic that anyone who doesn't need helpful directions should never consult a how-to book like this one. The subject here is not 'introduction to Shakespeare,' for which there is scarcely any need since there are plenty of them, and very good ones, too. This particular 'how-to' is also not to be taken as an academic book. ...It is, however, a book on ...the problem of reading. Here I have narrowed that wide issue to one particular kind of reading--the drama--and to one particular writer, William Shakespeare, the dramatist taken to be the most famous in the world, and who seems to present certain problems for those who want to read his work." -Gerald Snare (Preface)
Snare, Gerald
2023 1-4955-1215-0 236 pages
(Softcover Edition) "It is almost a rule of logic that anyone who doesn't need helpful directions should never consult a how-to book like this one. The subject here is not 'introduction to Shakespeare,' for which there is scarcely any need since there are plenty of them, and very good ones, too. This particular 'how-to' is also not to be taken as an academic book. ...It is, however, a book on ...the problem of reading. Here I have narrowed that wide issue to one particular kind of reading--the drama--and to one particular writer, William Shakespeare, the dramatist taken to be the most famous in the world, and who seems to present certain problems for those who want to read his work." -Gerald Snare (Preface)
Jordan-Finnegan, Ryder
2006 0-7734-5753-4 288 pages
This study examines two primary plays: After the Fall by Arthur Miller and The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare, using a Jungian Analytical Psychological approach. By focusing on certain components of Jung’s theories of individuation, the development of personality, and the power of evil, the study provides evidence that the two main characters, Quentin and Hamlet, respectively, come to a place of moral differentiation.
This book emphasizes the components of the human condition and provides examples from the dramatic works of Shakespeare and Miller as evidence of the possibilities available to humanity. Significantly, the use of Jung’s ideas on individuation with Miller’s plays bring to the world of literary scholarship a contribution of understanding the work that Miller was doing and how vitally important his plays are to humanity as a touchstone of human development. The analytical bridge created between Jung and Shakespeare represents a clear statement of the importance of original and pioneering scholarship between two writers who seemingly have no reason to be connected.
This study will appeal to scholars in Renaissance and modern literary studies, as well as those interested in psychology and religion. The work provides a look into realms of literature, psychology, philosophy, and religion, which not only points to the theoretical analysis provided in scholarship but also to the more serious and eternal questions concerning evil and personality.
Friedman, Jonathan
2004 0-7734-6325-9 146 pages
This project examines the literary, cultural, and historical significance of the 1937 stage play, The Eternal Road, the biblical epic of the Jewish émigré titans—writer Franz Werfel, composer Kurt Weill, and director Max Reinhardt. In academic circles, the play is relatively well known, although it has not received the kind of attention that scholars have paid to works such as The Threepenny Opera, Forty Days of Musa Dagh, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Reinhardt’s most often performed theatrical production. Apart from articles and chapters in dissertations and books, no comprehensive analysis of Road exists in monograph form.
The play, which premiered at the Manhattan Opera House in January 1937, sold out its 153 performances, but it closed less than six months later, a victim of extravagant casting and design. In fact, no Broadway show in its time ran up as large a deficit. Meyer Weisgal, its producer, dubbed it one of the theater’s most brilliant money-losers ever. The significance of Road lies elsewhere—in its singular moment of expression of Jewish pride by several colorful, albeit complicated, dramatis personae.
There are numerous areas of scholarship to which a study of this sort contributes. Students of the history of American theater will welcome a recitation of the play’s production history and a careful reading of its text. Historians, meanwhile, might find the subject helpful in illuminating some of the everyday responses to Nazi persecution by central European Jewish émigrés. One of the more intriguing issues for me is where to situate Road within the broader context of the life work of its principal creators. To what degree was the play a departure from or a continuity within the aesthetic approaches of Reinhardt, the parvenu, Weill, the left-leaning social critic, and Werfel, the would-be Catholic. To what extent did the three figures project their conflicts with, and corresponding concepts of, “Jewishness” onto the text and performance of the play? What was the role of external and intrinsic factors that helped to bring Road into existence? If Hitler had never come to power, would there have been an Eternal Road?
The show was the only occasion in which Reinhardt, Werfel, and Weill joined together to issue a condemnation, in the only language and forum they knew, of the Nazi assault on Jewish culture, religion, and history. And yet their play was more than mere anti-Nazi tableau, and certainly more than either a technical wonder or a box office bomb. It was a remarkable tribute by Jews to Jews in all their various, conflicting incarnations.
Dashwood, Julie
1997 0-7734-8746-8 300 pages
The purpose of these essays is to enable readers to broaden an deepen their knowledge of Luigi Pirandello and his influence on the drama of the twentieth century. The essays have been grouped loosely under four headings: issues of theory, issues of genre, issues of gender, and issues of language and theatre.
Davies, Ann
2004 0-7734-6343-7 304 pages
While many scholars have approached Don Juan in terms of myth, this study argues for the understanding of Don Juan as a discourse of gender relations, changing over time. Using examples from the plays by Tirso de Molina, Molière, Mozart, Zorrila, Shaw and Frisch, it argues that Don Juan’s entire identity as a male individual is constructed around women, but that over time – reflecting a growing sense of crisis in the male individual – the women appear more and more pathological in their desire for Don Juan. In contrast with early modern works where women fend for themselves in a positive manner, the heroines of later Don Juan works actively prey on the individual male. This book argues that these changes in approach to the female characters, and, in tandem, the developing identity of the male protagonist, suggest Don Juan as dischronic discourse rather than myth. Don Juan is not the eternal seducer, but one of a variety of discourses through which gender relations are negotiated. This book will interest not only Don Juan scholars but also scholars and students of European literature, theatre and gender discourses in literature and culture.
Pyle, Sandra J.
1997 0-7734-8480-9 284 pages
Demonstrates though textual analysis of seven dramas Shakespeare's adaptation of a medieval character type - the holy fool. Fundamentally, the holy fool's mission is to promote harmony and good will by correcting those personality flaws that impede human community. The identification and development of the holy fool as a viable literary device has led to the discovery of a new motif in Shakespeare's drama - the salvific element of play inherent in the role of holy fool as spiritual physician. They demonstrate how art, particularly drama, proves an indispensable tool for illustrating how personal moral choices impact on a society.
Hye, Allen E.
1996 0-7734-8869-3 232 pages
This study includes chapters on European, American and British drama and bibliographic reference to many other plays about the scientists. While it is based on study of the original texts, it employs citations from English translations to make the material accessible to the English-speaking reader. It focuses on the moral dilemmas of the scientist and society but goes beyond the political and ethical discussion of atomic weapons that dominates most other studies. The plays discussed explore scientific experimentation with human subjects, utopian social science, the threat of irresponsible engineering and technology, creationism vs. evolution, and the abuses of psychiatry. The plays link these modern issues with eternal themes of human existence: the inquiring nature of mankind, the drive for knowledge and certainty, questions about God, human uniqueness and identity, a desire for and concern about progress. Dramas include: Goethe's Faust and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"; Büchner's Woyzeck; Hauptmann's Before Daybreak; Kaiser's Gas-trilogy; Brecht's A Man's a Man, The Ocean Flight/The Baden Didactic Play of Agreement, and Life of Galileo; Kipphardt's In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer; Dürrenmatt's The Physicists; Lawrence and Lee's Inherit the Wind; and Barnes' The Ruling Class.
Kawashima, Shigenari
2014 0-7734-0057-5 204 pages
This unique and fresh interpretation of an enigmatic classic provides a better understanding of the play’s religious and political undertones with an innovative and focused examination which proposes an earlier recognition than previously assumed of the whole truth by Jocasta. This will become an indispensable reference book for Classical scholars in this first ever English translation.
Duncan, Dawn
2004 0-7734-6498-0 272 pages
This study demonstrates the practical application of postcolonial theory to Irish drama. It argues that postcolonial tactics must evolve to suit temporal needs, calling for a re-evaluation of writers too easily dismissed or overlooked in earlier generations. Starting with Sheridan’s sister, Alicia LeFanu, around the Act of Union, moving to Dion Boucicault’s comedic melodramas post-famine, then to W.B. Yeats’ romantic Celt mythology plays, on to Brian Friel’s interrogation of nationalisms, and finally to contemporary voices now emerging, analyses of the focus plays and their public reception illustrates why drama, as a communally received literate work, may more powerfully voice postcolonial concerns than the previously privileged novel form.
Flagg, John Sewell
1972 0-7734-0341-8 287 pages
Suggests the need for considering these two dramas as being of a piece with The Cenci, and deals with the problems of classifying Shelley's dramas and finding their underlying coherence.
Converse, Terry John
1999 0-7734-8207-5 268 pages
In addition to a comprehensive Jungian analysis of the play, this study provides a psychological definition of the grotesque which may be used as a critical model for other literary works that involve a grotesque vision.
Erickson, Leslie Goss
2006 0-7734-5911-1 260 pages
This study explores the concept of every man and every woman as hero. Using three models of the heroic journey, this book identifies and delineates female and male heroes in a variety of works and genres of postmodern American culture. Joseph Campbell’s thesis as set forth in The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) maintains that regardless of manifestation, the heroic journey is one core myth describing venturing human beings as they progress through levels of consciousness to individuation, self-actualization, and enlightenment. Exploring that assertion, the study also uses two post-Campbell models, Carol S. Pearson’s archetypal model The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By (1986) and Susan A. Lichtman’s gender specific model, Life Stages of Woman’s Heroic Journey: A Study of the Origins of the Great Goddess Archetype (1991). These theories are applied to twentieth-century works from various cultures – Latin American, African American, and Anglo-American – and various genres – literature, film and drama. This work will appeal to scholars in a variety of areas including those researching identity, psychological development, and consciousness evolution in literary characters and how that development is influenced by the cultures and systems within which those characters live.
Campbell, Danny C.
2002 0-7734-6856-0 224 pages
Studies early 17th century dramatic themes, characters, and rhetoric in relation to recent advances made in understanding Milton, Machiavelli, and political theory in general as it developed after Elizabeth I’s death. It provides a vital and long-neglected connection between the revenge drama so popular after Elizabeth’s death and the political atmosphere of dissent that led to Charles I’s beheading.
Rizzoli, Renato
1999 0-7734-1253-0 212 pages
This study analyzes a characteristic feature of some Jacobean plays, the serialization of coup de théâtre, by first tracing back and theoretically reconstructing its pattern in Aristotle’s Poetics and later in the Italian literary debate and experiments on tragicomedy of the late Renaissance. The adoption of the larger European perspectives allows the study to document the peculiar, original solutions adopted by the Jacobean dramas, where this pattern is not only integrally reproduced in the case of Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragicomedy, but also inventively used in a critical way by dramatists such as Tourneur, Middleton and Webster in order to create highly problematical and radical tragedies.
Kurdi, Mária
2010 0-7734-1421-5 206 pages
Departing from the assumption that female-authored drama has developed its own strategies or revitalized older ones, this book traces dramatization of the specific female experience on the contemporary Irish stage. This work also rescues from obscurity plays written by lesser known authors.
Mitchell, Charles
2004 0-7734-6553-7 172 pages
Demonstrates how Shakespeare utilized a strategy of manipulating the language and conventions of public execution in his plays. Paying special attention to the poetics of hangings at Tyburn, the most dominant place of execution, Shakespeare’s subversion of this well-known (and uneasy) discourse between the public and the state is illuminated by close readings of The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. It uses audience-reception theory and new historicism, as well as non-dramatic texts (popular literature and ballads) to demonstrate the knowledge and experiences of execution that the audiences of Shakespeare’s time took with them to the theatre. With illustrations.
Mitchell, Charles
2004 1-4955-0928-1 172 pages
Demonstrates how Shakespeare utilized a strategy of manipulating the language and conventions of public execution in his plays. Paying special attention to the poetics of hangings at Tyburn, the most dominant place of execution, Shakespeare’s subversion of this well-known (and uneasy) discourse between the public and the state is illuminated by close readings of The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. It uses audience-reception theory and new historicism, as well as non-dramatic texts (popular literature and ballads) to demonstrate the knowledge and experiences of execution that the audiences of Shakespeare’s time took with them to the theatre. With illustrations.
Bellis, Clive
2011 0-7734-3663-4 228 pages
This collection deals with the works of Shakespeare and Cervantes, with Rabelais as their common predecessor. This work presents the Shakespeare-Cervantes relation not only from a purely textual perspective, as scholars have tended to do, but also from a theatrical perspective, since both shared the condition of playwrights.
Wiegmann, Mira
2003 0-7734-6891-9 312 pages
This study employs Jungian and post-Jungian hermeneutics to address psychological, social and political perspectives in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, M. Butterfly, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. These plays and their Broadway productions contain mythic narratives and dreams that Jung described as visionary drama. Peter Brooks’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream stages Jungian archetypes that bridge modern and postmodern production sensibilities and aesthetics. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly deconstructs patriarchal personae and stages projection and introjection. Terrence McNally’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, an adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel, demonstrates the fluidity of meaning in postmodern archetypes. This book will engage theatre scholars and practitioners as well as scholars of popular culture and interdisciplinary studies. It models archetypal hermeneutics as a useful analytical tool for postmodern performance criticism. Illustrated with production photographs.
Howard, Camille Cole
1992 0-7734-9856-7 156 pages
This study focuses on three stagings of the ballet: Vincenzo Galeotti's 1811 production of ROMEO OG GIULIETTA for the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen; Leonid Lavrovsky's 1940 full-length production for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad; and Antony Tudor's 1943 one-act production for Ballet Theatre in New York. The ballets chosen define dance tradition at a given period or extend the dance through some crucial enlargement. Also, they reflect the aesthetic theories and tastes of their choreographers, the technique and training of the dancers, modes of artistic interpretation and performance, and, finally, the politics of the country as expressed through company production policies and selections. The book uses contemporary reports, musical scores, stage plans, production pictures, journal entries and the recorded memories of the performing and producing artists.
Bose, Mandakranta
1980 0-7734-0352-3 71 pages
Kari, Daven M.
1991 0-88946-688-2 220 pages
Examination of Eliot's major contributions to verse drama and his adoption of dramatic methods to express his maturing religious beliefs in his plays. Explores Eliot's movement from presenting saintly solitude as the path to spiritual renewal, to offering communal affirmation as an equally viable avenue to peace with self, society, and God. Treats Eliot's biographical and theological development, emphasizing the philosophical and theological convictions influencing his plays. Studies the development of his use of characterization, verse technique, and elements of stage craft within the thematic movement from solitary suffering to communal affirmation, and from love that betrays to love that redeems.
Lapisardi, Frederick S.
1991 0-7734-9912-1 244 pages
Eva Gore-Booth, active feminist and pacifist, and sister of the Irish rebel leader Constance Markievicz, published at least nineteen volumes of poems, plays, and prose during her lifetime. Included under this title are all five of Gore-Booth's plays; well-wrought, actable dramas drawing at times on the same materials Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge, and AE molded into Ireland's literary renaissance. Supplemented by introductions, a bibliography, and appendices including relevant notes from the 1929 Poems, materials from a rare 1916 edited version of a longer play, and a chronology.
Egan, Michael
2006 0-7734-6078-0 664 pages
Awarded the Adele Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship
This new multi-volume edition of an anonymous Elizabethan history play that has intrigued Shakespeare scholars for more than a century. Using modern computer softwares to degrain and magnify the text, Michael Egan resolves many of the transcription difficulties presented by the handwritten manuscript to produce the most authoritative edition yet available. A set of Text and Variorum Notes meticulously records the variant readings of previous editors and provides relevant citations from contemporary sources and other analytic comments to clarify the play's meanings, concerns and thematic preoccupations. Among other features of this edition are an original conclusion in the Elizabethan manner (some lines of the manuscript's final scene are missing), a book-length Introduction proving that Shakespeare wrote the play, and a l00-page supplement detailing over 1,600 echoes and parallels with the Collected Works. Other sections examine 1 Richard II 's textual history from 1870–present, outline its historical background and include selections from the writings of those critics who have discussed the work in detail. This work is a must for every Shakespearean collection.
Egan, Michael
2006 0-7734-6084-5 396 pages
This is a new multi- volume edition of an anonymous Elizabethan history play that has intrigued Shakespeare scholars for more than a century. Using modern computer softwares to degrain and magnify the text, Michael Egan resolves many of the transcription difficulties presented by the handwritten MS to produce the most authoritative edition yet available. A set of Text and Variorum Notes meticulously records the variant readings of previous editors and provides relevant citations from contemporary sources and other analytic comments to clarify the play's meanings, concerns and thematic preoccupations. Among other features of this edition are an original conclusion in the Elizabethan manner (some lines of the MS's final scene are missing), a book-length Introduction proving that Shakespeare wrote the play, and a l00-page supplement detailing over 1,600 echoes and parallels with the Collected Works. Other sections examine 1 Richard II 's textual history from 1870–present, outline its historical background and include selections from the writings of those critics who have discussed the work in detail. This work is a must for every Shakespearean collection.
Egan, Michael
2006 0-7734-6080-2 576 pages
This new multi-volume edition of an anonymous Elizabethan history play that has intrigued Shakespeare scholars for more than a century. Using modern computer softwares to degrain and magnify the text, Michael Egan resolves many of the transcription difficulties presented by the handwritten MS to produce the most authoritative edition yet available. A set of Text and Variorum Notes meticulously records the variant readings of previous editors and provides relevant citations from contemporary sources and other analytic comments to clarify the play's meanings, concerns and thematic preoccupations. Among other features of this edition are an original conclusion in the Elizabethan manner (some lines of the MS's final scene are missing), a book-length Introduction proving that Shakespeare wrote the play, and a l00-page supplement detailing over 1,600 echoes and parallels with the Collected Works. Other sections examine 1 Richard II 's textual history from 1870–present, outline its historical background and include selections from the writings of those critics who have discussed the work in detail. This work is a must for every Shakespearean collection.
Egan, Michael
2006 0-7734-6082-9 488 pages
This new multi-volume edition of an anonymous Elizabethan history play that has intrigued Shakespeare scholars for more than a century. Using modern computer softwares to degrain and magnify the text, Michael Egan resolves many of the transcription difficulties presented by the handwritten MS to produce the most authoritative edition yet available. A set of Text and Variorum Notes meticulously records the variant readings of previous editors and provides relevant citations from contemporary sources and other analytic comments to clarify the play's meanings, concerns and thematic preoccupations. Among other features of this edition are an original conclusion in the Elizabethan manner (some lines of the MS's final scene are missing), a book-length Introduction proving that Shakespeare wrote the play, and a l00-page supplement detailing over 1,600 echoes and parallels with the Collected Works. Other sections examine 1 Richard II 's textual history from 1870–present, outline its historical background and include selections from the writings of those critics who have discussed the work in detail. This work is a must for every Shakespearean collection.
Rebholz, Ronald A.
2006 0-7734-5731-3 308 pages
With the exception of the three parts of Henry VI, which are examined in one chapter, each chapter is devoted to the critical analysis of one of Shakespeare’s plays. Each analysis begins with a central idea or question that shapes the entire chapter. Background issues, like the plays’ sources and secondary materials, are introduced only when relevant to the author’s analysis. Taken together, the separate chapters make a larger, coherent whole that reveals the major facets of Shakespeare’s creation in comedy, history plays, tragedy, and romances.
Morrison, Mary
1997 0-7734-8636-4 412 pages
This study examines the creative processes by which Giraldi transforms his narrative source, usually a novella from his own Hecatommithi, into a five act drama, conforming, more or less, to the conventions of 'regular' classical tragedy. Giraldi, devising these entertainments for the court of his patron, Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara, begins each play by designing an appropriate stage set of the Serlian type (the perspective of a city), to be built and painted by professional artists under his direction; he than adds to the plot new personages, drawn from court life or reflecting topical problems, and places these in situations of tension, with moments of surprise and occasional outbursts of violence. This study demonstrates these points by giving a summary of the relevant novella, followed by a scene by scene synopsis of the play. The detailed synopses will allow all students of drama to appreciate the nature of Giraldi's court entertainments by drawing attention to the non-literary aspects of his dramaturgy, to décor, movement and spectacle. With illustrations.
Romano, Evelia
2004 0-7734-6270-8 279 pages
Alfonsina Storni was one of the leading feminist poets and playwrights in Latin America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Storni's poetry has been widely translated and has received various studies and criticism On the other hand, her theater has been mostly neglected until the present. The translation of Two Pyrotechnic Forces consisting of Cimbelina en 1900 y pico (Cvmbeline in 1900-and-something) and Polixena y la cocinerita (Polyxena and the Little Cook) gives scholars and students in the fields of Latin American literature, women's studies and world theater the opportunity to study rare examples of theater written by a woman on very controversial and progressive issues at the beginning of the twentieth century. Storni's farces are a striking example of experimental language to portray and criticize social and political realities. The plays also constitute an iconoclastic approach to the theatrical canon, since Polyxena and the Little Cook is based on Euripides' Hecuba and Cymbeline in the 1900-and-Something parodies the creation of another great name, William Shakespeare The translation is furnished with an introduction that reviews the whole theatrical production of Storni in relation to the historical and social developments of her time and places her work within the context of the literature and theater of Argentina and the Southern Cone. It emphasizes the role of Storni's plays in the foundation of a lineage of female playwrights on the Argentine stage.
Mahaney, William E.
1973 0-7734-0595-X 192 pages
These two plays were produced within a few years of each other at St. John's College, Oxford, early in the seventeenth century. Texts by William E. Mahaney and Walter K. Sherwin. Translations by Walter K. Sherwin, Jay Freyman, and Eve Parrish. Introductions and Notes by William E. Mahaney. [Mellen Studies in Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies No. 16]
Shiff, Jonathan
1994 0-7734-9424-3 200 pages
This study examines for the first time the thirty-eight anonymous plays performed at the state banquets that Doge Marino Grimani was required by law to offer four times a year for the leading senators and magistrates of the Venetian Republic. Explores the patronage, audience, site, performers, and music of the first performances, and places their ideological content in the context of the Venice of 1600. It finds that their most unusual feature is a ludic use of rhetoric which betrays the influence of the Sienese veglia games. These games, which called for wit, verbal skill, and variety of response, had recently penetrated Venice by means of Girolamo Bargagli's Dialogo de' Giuochi. They inspired the creation of a new theatrical form. A stylistic analysis of the Grimani plays suggests that all but one are the work of a single author, most likely Enea Piccolomini, a figure hitherto unknown to scholarship, and to whom one of the plays has traditionally been attributed.
Dureau, Yona
2018 1-4955-0636-3 260 pages
This book examines the scholarly research and investigations into the life of English Playwright William Shakespeare. Dr. Dureau sets to out show that writing an accurate and factual biography of Shakespeare is troubled by contradictory sources that use various names with varied political agendas. The book includes 21 color photos.
Dashwood, Julie
1991 0-7734-9717-X 201 pages
These essays cover much of the span of Italian drama, from its origins, via the Renaissance and the 19th century, to Pirandello and versions for radio and theatre of Svevo's best-known novel. Contributors raise interesting questions concerning the nature of drama and how and where it can be identified.