'On Beckett' is a collection of writings about the Nobel Prize-winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett.

Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage presents articles on the theories of translation and adaptation, new insights on the work of Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Thomas Kilroy, and Tom Murphy, historical analyses of theatrical productions during the Irish Revival, interviews with contemporary theatre directors, and a round-table discussion with the playwrights, Michael West and Thomas Kilroy. Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage challenges the notion that a country's dramatic tradition develops in cultural isolation. It uncovers connections between past productions of plays by Ibsen and Chekhov and contemporary literary adaptations of their works by Irish playwrights, demonstrating the significance of international influence for the formation of national canon. Conceived in the spirit of a round-table discussion, Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage is a collective study of the intricacies of trans-cultural migration of dramatic works and a re-examination of Irish theatre history from 1890 to the present day.

A timely book that identifies the practice of (syn)aesthetics in artistic style and audience response, which helps to articulate the power of experiential practice in the arts. This exciting new approach includes interviews with leading practitioners in of theatre, dance, site-specific work, live art and technological performance practice.

This revelatory study explores how Scottish history plays, especially since the 1930s, raise issues of ideology, national identity, historiography, mythology, gender and especially Scottish language. Covering topics up to the end of World War Two, the book addresses the work of many key figures from the last century of Scottish theatre, including Robert McLellan and his contemporaries, and also Hector MacMillan, Stewart Conn, John McGrath, Donald Campbell, Bill Bryden, Sue Glover, Liz Lochhead, Jo Clifford, Peter Arnott, David Greig, Rona Munro and others often neglected or misunderstood. Setting these writers' achievements in the context of their Scottish and European predecessors, Ian Brown offers fresh insights into key aspects of Scottish theatre. As such, this represents the first study to offer an overarching view of historical representation on Scottish stages, exploring the nature of 'history' and 'myth' and relating these afresh to how dramatists use - and subvert - them. Engaging and accessible, this innovative book will attract scholars and students interested in history, ideology, mythology, theatre politics and explorations of national and gender identity.

The Nation of Islam and Black Consciousness: The Works of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Other Writers engages in the scholarly discussions about the origins and formation of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which rarely give credit to the role of the Nation of Islam's (NOI) teachings in the emergence of the movement and in shaping the subjects and themes of its literary works. This book reevaluates the common belief that Malcolm X is the most appealing black historical figure in the movement's literature and demonstrates how the NOI's perception of black consciousness shaped the aesthetic sensibilities of the movement's poets and playwrights in their fights against anti-black racism. The Nation of Islam and Black Consciousness can be used in African American literature courses as it provides a thorough analysis of hidden literary texts written by black writers in the 1960s and 1970s. Reading this book today will help readers reflect on how a narrow understanding of "Americanness" is threatening to the American ideals of diversity and inclusiveness on which America was founded. Moreover, this book is useful for those who are interested in studying how identity politics functions to achieve certain social and cultural goals.

This series of volumes aims to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of literature and religion, concerned with the fundamentally important issues of the imagination, literary perceptions and an understanding of poetics for theology and religious studies, and the underlying religious implications in so much literature and literary criticism. This introduction to the theatre also attempts to offer a meditation on the theatricality of the Incarnation. Arguing that both biblical and dramatic texts should be approached with a theatrical rather than a literary imagination, the author explores theatrical history, looking at plays as diverse as the medieval Cornish "Ordinalia" and Rostand's romantic "Cyrano de Bergerec". At the same time, he observes the comic potential of the Gospel narratives and the affirmation of humanity entailed in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation.

A History of Modern Drama: Volume II explores a remarkable breadth of topics and analytical approaches to the dramatic works, authors, and transitional events and movements that shaped world drama from 1960 through to the dawn of the new millennium. * Features detailed analyses of plays and playwrights, examining the influence of a wide range of writers, from mainstream icons such as Harold Pinter and Edward Albee, to more unorthodox works by Peter Weiss and Sarah Kane * Provides global coverage of both English and non-English dramas including works from Africa and Asia to the Middle East * Considers the influence of art, music, literature, architecture, society, politics, culture, and philosophy on the formation of postmodern dramatic literature * Combines wide-ranging topics with original theories, international perspective, and philosophical and cultural context Completes a comprehensive two-part work examining modern world drama, and alongside A History of Modern Drama: Volume I, offers readers complete coverage of a full century in the evolution of global dramatic literature.

This collection of essays sets out to challenge the dominant narrative about Victorian theatre by placing the practices and products of the Victorian theatre in relation to Victorian visual culture, through the lens of the concept of 'Ruskinian theatre, ' an approach to theatre which values its educative purpose as well as its aesthetic expression.

The book studies the past of the characters in Aeschylus and Sophocles, a neglected but crucial topic. The characters' beliefs, values, and emotions bear on their view of the past. This view reinforces their beliefs and their conception of themselves and others as agents of free will and members of a family and/or community. The study reveals that, although the characters' idea of the past is fixed, the impact of the past is not. The characters consider, review, and construct narratives of it, as they seek to mould a future they perceive as morally just for themselves and others.

This book paints a vivid portrait of Anton Chekhov - a Russian writer whose elusive personality and richly detailed plays have left an indelible imprint upon the world's theatre. Every page reveals the joys and difficulties of his short life, his comic sensibility, deep compassion, and often puzzling use of dramatic style and genre. Carnicke demystifies Chekhov's plays - forged from his literary innovations, avid theatre going, love of vaudeville, and loathing of melodrama. She interweaves biographical and cultural information with insightful case studies and close analysis to leave her reader with a full and fresh perspective on an artist, who is as foundational to theatrical traditions as are Shakespeare and Stanislavsky.

A vivid snapshot of America's kaleidoscopic literary tradition, A Journey Through American Literature illuminates the authors, works, and events that have shaped our cultural heritage. Kevin J. Hayes charts this history through a series of approachable thematic chapters-Narrative Voice and the Short Story, the Drama of the Everyday, the Great American Novel-that reveal the richness of our literature while providing a compelling set of footholds with which to engage it. Among the topics covered are the role of travel and the symbolism of geography, characters and the importance of voice and dialect, self-definition and the American dream, new beginnings, and the role of memory. Hayes not only discusses the main canonical genres like poetry, drama, and the novel, but also looks at travel writing, autobiography, and frame tales. Key writers like Mark Twain, Ralph Ellison, Emily Dickinson, and Harriet Jacobs are central players in the drama while dozens more create a backdrop that gives this history depth. The book also features over 20 illustrations, a bibliography, and a chronology listing the key events and work in America's literary history.

"Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement "unravels politics from theatre in order to propose a new means to politicize performance. The last human venue is the location where the sense of one's aliveness, ethical associations, and collective potential is kickstarted through the shock of theatrical affects. Performance analyses ranging from child actors, animals and objects to reflections on the innovative theatre work of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Forced Entertainment and Goat Island combine to offer a radical critique of performance studies: the first social science of appearance.

Greek Memories aims to identify and examine the central concepts underlying the theories and practices of memory in the Greek world, from the archaic period to Late Antiquity, across all the main literary genres, and to trace some fundamental changes in these theories and practices. It explores the interaction and development of different 'disciplinary' approaches to memory in Ancient Greece, which will enable a fuller and deeper understanding of the whole phenomenon, and of its specific manifestations. This collection of papers contributes to enriching the current scholarly discussion by refocusing it on the question of how various theories and practices of memory, recollection, and forgetting play themselves out in specific texts and authors from Ancient Greece, within a wide chronological span (from the Homeric poems to Plotinus), and across a broad range of genres and disciplines (epic and lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy, historiography, philosophy and scientific prose treatises).

Originally published in 1990, Medieval English Drama is an exhaustive bibliography of scholarship on medieval English drama. Each item has been annotated in the bibliography with considerable care; these annotations are descriptive rather than critical and give a clear synopsis of the content of each reference, the texts with which it deals, and a brief indication of its critical position. The bibliography is divided into two sections; editions and collections of plays, and critical works. The bibliography is exhaustive rather than selective and provides English annotations for foreign language works, as well as a list of reviews for most books. The book covers liturgical and folk drama, other forms of entertainment, and related material useful to researchers in the field. The book provides an update of sources not listed in Carl J. Stratman's comprehensive Bibliography of Medieval Drama published in 1972.

Over the centuries, drama has been an influential and imaginative medium for presenting, analysing and offering ways of resolving real or fictional battles. This volume provides readers with a timely study of inter-generational conflicts and crises as seen through the eyes of male and female British and Irish playwrights from the medieval period to the twenty-first century. The contributions suggest that at the heart of inter-generational discord lies various crises between (the) age(d) and youth or, more generally, the idea of what is "old" and "new". The interaction and co-existence of age and youth in their embodied, symbolic or conceptual forms is the topic of this volume. The collection is built around the words "age(d)"/"young", which denote both the biological age of the characters and the more conceptual potential of these terms. Ultimately, the contributors to this collection of essays analyse not only the idea of inter-generationality within selected dramatic works but also inter-generational conflicts seen in clashes of cultures, artistic visions, concepts and aesthetic idea(l)s.

"And Yet I Remember" explores representations of ageing and old age in English drama from 1660 to the 1750s. Within these approximately ninety years, England witnessed significant developments in medicine and the advent of sentimental philosophy, which began to transform attitudes toward old age and ageing. This study discusses the enduring cultural and literary stereotyping of old(er) people in culture and drama of this period. The chapters are organised around the stereotypes that kept reappearing in cultural, medical and religious narratives on old age, namely the desiring old man (senex amans) and woman (the "lusty old widow") and the nostalgic and wise elder. Exploring many diverse storylines between 1660 and the 1750s that treat old age and present old(er) characters, the analyses in this study further show how the choice of genre, personal experiences and attitudes of the playwright, and political and cultural revolutions affected the representation of older people.

Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity is the first full-length critical study to analyse the importance of beards in terms of the theatrical performance of masculinity. According to medical, cultural, and literary discourses of early modern era in England, facial hair marked adult manliness while beardlessness indicated boyhood. Beards were therefore a passport to cultural prerogatives. This book explores this in relation to the early modern stage, a space in which the processes of gender formation in early modern society were writ large, and how the uses of facial hair in the theatre illuminate the operations of power and politics in society more widely. Written for scholars of Early Modern Theatre and Theatre History, this volume anatomises the role of beards in the construction of onstage masculinity, acknowledging the challenges offered to the dominant ideology of manliness by boys and men who misrepresented or failed to fulfil bearded masculine ideals.

This collection investigates dramatic and performative renderings of 'America' as an exilic place particularly focusing on issues of language, space and identity. It looks at ways in which immigrants and outsiders are embodied in American theatre practice and explores ways in which 'America' is staged and dramatized by immigrants and foreigners.

The 15th in a series drawn from scholarship presented at the annual Comparative Drama Conference at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, this collection provides insights into texts and practices currently at the forefront of theatrical discussion. The volume includes various essays on the intersections of script and performance, and features an exclusive interview with keynote speaker, playwright Simon Stephens.

To what extent is a great comic writer the product of his time? How far is he (or she) influenced by factors of personal psychology upbringing and environment? To what is the writing actually part of a long continuum in which there is continuity within change and change within continuity? The Progress of Fun considers principally the last of these areas, focussing on the case of W.S. Gilbert and challenging the frequently held view that he is pre-eminently a typical Victorian. This it does by tracing his roots back to Ancient Greek comedy and to the various comedic developments that have dominated Western Europe thereafter. Also included is a careful examination of the constraints and limitations that in various forms have long affected comedy-writing, and an evaluation of Gilbert's particular skills and legacy within the on-going process. The whole is a suitable prelude to a second volume (Pipes and Tabors) which will consider Genre in W.S. Gilbert, again relating it to comedic precedents and the universally timeless within the particular.

History of English Literature is a comprehensive, eight-volume survey of English literature from the Middle Ages to the early twenty-first century. This reference work provides insightful and often revisionary readings of core texts in the English literary canon. Richly informative analyses are framed by the biographical, historical and intellectual context for each author. Volume 1 begins by discussing Anglo-Saxon literature before focusing on the three major Middle English poets of the late fourteenth century: Gower, Langland and Chaucer. It then engages with the sixteenth-century prose romances of Sidney, the epic and lyrical poetry of Spenser, and Donne's love and religious poems. Full coverage is devoted to the legendary fifty-year blossoming of the Elizabethan theatre (excluding Shakespeare, the object of Volume 2), from Kyd and Marlowe up to Jonson, Webster, Middleton, Ford and Shirley. The final part addresses the sixteenth-century prose works of Lyly, Greene and Nashe, homiletics by Hooker and others, and Elizabethan travel literature and historiography.

The Metamorphoses of Commedia dell'Arte traces the steps by which Commedia has been transformed by cultural contact outside Italy into popular forms which bear little resemblance to the original. The book follows the Masks of Arlecchino, Pedrolino and Pulcinella as they gradually migrate and mutate into Harlequin, Mr. Punch and seaside Pierrot troupes. What happened to Pantalone, Scaramouche, Colombina and the male Lover is also investigated, though they had no final forms of their own. This study constitutes a history of what happened, notably in France and Great Britain, to a supremely popular theatrical genre as a result of changing fashions in entertainment brought on by societal developments, civil and industrial revolution and dynastic change. It investigates how the genre was exploited by management, and even its own stars, lost its vitality and gradually ended up in 'sunken' forms.

Portraits in Early Modern English Drama studies the complex web of interconnections that grows out of the presentation of portraits as props in early modern English drama. Emanuel Stelzer considers this theory from the Elizabethan age up to the closing of the theatres. This book examines how the dramatic text and the subjectivities of the dramatis personae are shaped and changed through the process of observation and interpretation of pictures in the dramatic actions and dialogues. Unlike any previous study, it confronts when a portrait is clearly meant not to be a miniature. This also has bearings on the effect of the picture on the audience and in terms of genre expectation. Two important questions are interrogated in the book: What were the price and value of these portraits? and What were the strategies deployed by the playing companies to show women's portraits in a theatre without actresses? This book will be of interest to different areas of research dealing with the history of drama and literature, material and visual culture studies, art history, gender studies, and performance studies.

Olympe de Gouges, French activist and playwright, has for centuries been called illiterate, immoral, and insane while being mentioned almost uniquely for her "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the female]" Citizen (1791). However, her plays and pamphlets imagine in vivid terms the consequences of natural right and their potential for transforming the autocratic state and family. She wrote nearly fifty plays, of which about a dozen have been recovered, and innumerable polemical letters, posters, brochures, and essays. This book uncovers her radical views of the self, the family, and the state and accounts for her vision of increasing female agency and decreasing the entitlements of aristocratic males. Here, Sherman examines and refutes the calumny de Gouges's reputation has suffered and proves that this intriguing historical figure deserves to be read instead of simply being talked about.