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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Plays & playwrights > General
Henry V, the climax of Shakespeare's sequence of English history
plays, is an inspiring, often comic celebration of a young
warrior-king. But it is also a study of the costly exhilarations of
war, and of the penalties as well as the glories of human
greatness. Introducing this brilliantly innovative edition, Gary
Taylor shows how Shakespeare shaped his historical material,
examines controversial critical interpretations, discusses the
play's fluctuating fortunes in performance, and analyses the range
and variety of Shakespeare's characterization. The first Folio text
is radically rethought, making original use of the First Quarto
(1600).
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
An enhanced exam section: expert guidance on approaching exam
questions, writing high-quality responses and using critical
interpretations, plus practice tasks and annotated sample answer
extracts. Key skills covered: focused tasks to develop your
analysis and understanding, plus regular study tips, revision
questions and progress checks to track your learning. The most
in-depth analysis: detailed text summaries and extract analysis to
in-depth discussion of characters, themes, language, contexts and
criticism, all helping you to succeed.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Lessing was a playwright, scholar, poet, archeologist, philosopher,
and critic. His genius is evident in the works collected in this
volume, which includes the comedy Minna von Barnhelm, the tragedy
Emilia, Galotti, Nathan the Wise, The Jews (and related
correspondence), Ernst and Falk: Conversations for the Freemasons,
and selections from philosophical and theological writings>
Die boek behandel spraakopleiding en opvoedkundige drama
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Modern Tragedy
(Hardcover)
James Moran; Series edited by Simon. Shepherd
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R1,577
Discovery Miles 15 770
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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What distinguishes modern tragedy from other forms of drama? How
does it relate to contemporary political and social conditions? To
what ends have artists employed the tragic form in different
locations during the 20th century? Partly motivated by the urgency
of our current situation in an age of ecocidal crisis, Modern
Tragedy encompasses a variety of drama from throughout the 20th
century. James Moran begins this book with John Millington Synge's
Riders to the Sea (1904), which shows how environmental awareness
might be expressed through tragic drama. Moran also looks at
Brecht's reworking of Synge's drama in the 1937 play Senora
Carrar's Rifles, and situates Brecht's script in the light of the
theatre practitioner's broader ideas about tragedy. Brecht's tragic
thinking - informed by Hegel and Marx - is contrasted with the
Schopenhauerian approach of Samuel Beckett. The volume goes on to
examine theatre makers whose ideas were partly motivated by
applying an understanding of the tragic narrative of Synge's Riders
to the Sea to postcolonial contexts. Looking at Derek Walcott's The
Sea at Dauphin (1954), and J.P. Clark's The Goat (1961), Modern
Tragedy explores how tragedy, a form that is often associated with
regressive assumptions about hegemony, might be rethought, and how
aspects of the tragic may coincide with the experiences and
concerns of authors and audiences of colour.
This collection brings together three international and
contemporary plays that each denounce violence against women,
alongside interviews with the creators and practitioners who
brought them to life. With interviews with writers, directors and
producers, who discuss the conception and staging of their plays,
their hope is to de-glamourize the staging of violence, to give
voice to the survivors of gendered violence, and to create
awareness and empathy within the audiences. Little Stitches
(London, 2014): four short pieces by Isley Lynn, Raul Quiros Molina
, Bahar Brunton and Karis E. Halsall on the issue of Female Genital
Mutilation as seen from the point of view of by-standers, health
professionals, women who support the practice and, finally,
survivors. 'Kubra' (Sydney, 2016) by Dacia Maraini, features a
young female protagonist who was subjected to FGM/C as a child, and
now brings her case to court. Rape Trial (Rome, 2018), adapted for
theatre by Renato Chiocca from the international award-winning
documentary of the same title made for Italian state television in
1979, shows how attitudes toward sexual violence, and judicial
procedures, tend to turn rape survivors from accusers into accused,
in court and in everyday discourse.
The Heinemann Plays series offers contemporary drama and classic
plays in classroom editions. Many have large casts and an equal mix
of boy and girl parts. This play depicts the conflict between a
fading Southern belle and the brash lower-class society of her
sister's family.
Teenager Alan, fought over by a religious mother and an atheist
father, finds release in horses, until he is driven to blind them
with a spike. Why? While treating the boy, a psychiatrist discovers
his own life is paradoxically in the witness box.
In contrast to other literary genres, drama has received little
attention in southern studies, and women playwrights in general
receive less recognition than their male counterparts. In
Marginalized: Southern Women Playwrights Confront Race, Region, and
Gender, author Casey Kayser addresses these gaps by examining the
work of southern women playwrights, making the argument that
representations of the American South on stage are complicated by
difficulties of identity, genre, and region. Through analysis of
the dramatic texts, the rhetoric of reviews of productions, as well
as what the playwrights themselves have said about their plays and
productions, Kayser delineates these challenges and argues that
playwrights draw on various conscious strategies in response. These
strategies, evident in the work of such playwrights as Pearl
Cleage, Sandra Deer, Lillian Hellman, Beth Henley, Marsha Norman,
and Shay Youngblood, provide them with the opportunity to lead
audiences to reconsider monolithic understandings of northern and
southern regions and, ultimately, create new visions of the South.
What is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of
Home, an international collection of eleven plays by and about
women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil,
India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer. The "answer"
includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create
a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings
wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their
mother's death; a family wrestling with the government's refusal to
allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young
scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young
man fleeing home due to his sexual orientation only to discover the
difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of
African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite
having lived in India for over 600 years. These are voices seldom
represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces
range from 20 to 90-minute pieces and include a mix of monologue,
duologue, and ensemble plays. Short yet powerful, they allow
fantastic performance opportunities particularly in an age of
social-distancing with flexible casts that together invite the
theme of home to be performed and studied on the page. The plays
include: The House by Arze Khodr (Lebanon), Happy by Kia Corthron
(US), The Blue of the Island by Evelyne Trouillot (Haiti), Nine
Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK), Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe
Gehrenbeck (Venezuela), Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana
(Uganda), On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine)
Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (US),
Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciacao (Brazil),
So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (US), and Those Who Live Here,
Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)
This new volume in the Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions series
is perfect for students coming to one of Plautus' most whimsical,
provocative, and influential plays for the first time, and a useful
first point of reference for scholars less familiar with Roman
comedy. Menaechmi is a tale of identical twin brothers who are
separated as young children and reconnect as adults following a
series of misadventures due to mistaken identity. A gluttonous
parasite, manipulative courtesan, shrewish wife, crotchety
father-in-law, bumbling cook, saucy handmaid, quack doctor, and
band of thugs comprise the colourful cast of characters. Each
encounter with a misidentified twin destabilizes the status quo and
provides valuable insight into Roman domestic and social
relationships. The book analyzes the power dynamics at play in the
various relationships, especially between master and slave and
husband and wife, in order to explore the meaning of freedom and
the status of slaves and women in Roman culture and Roman comedy.
These fundamental societal concerns gave Plautus' Menaechmi an
enduring role in the classical tradition, which is also examined
here, including notable adaptations by William Shakespeare, Jean
Francois Regnard, Carlo Goldoni and Rodgers and Hart.
Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights is the first
anthology of LGBTQ-themed plays written by Russian queer authors
and straight allies in the 21st century. The book features plays by
established and emergent playwrights of the Russian drama scene,
including Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina
Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milanteva, Olzhas
Zhanaydarov, Vladimir Zaytsev, and Elizaveta Letter. Writing for
children, teenagers, and adults, these authors explore gay,
lesbian, trans, and other queer lives in prose and in verse. From a
confession-style solo play to poetic satire on contemporary Russia;
from a play for children to love dramas that have been staged for
adult-only audiences in Moscow and other cities, this important
anthology features work that was written around or after 2013-the
year when the law on the prohibition of "propaganda of
non-traditional sexual relations among minors" was passed by the
Russian government. These plays are universal stories of humanity
that spread a message of tolerance, acceptance, and love and make
clear that a queer scenario does not necessarily have to end in a
tragedy just because it was imagined and set in Russia. They show
that breathing, growing old, falling in love, falling out of love,
and falling in love again can be just as challenging and rewarding
in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia as it can be in New York, Tokyo,
Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires.
In the final decade of the eighteenth century, theatre was amongst
the most important sites for redefining France's national identity.
In this study, Annelle Curulla uses a range of archival material to
show that, more than any other subject matter which was once
forbidden from the French stage, Roman Catholic religious life
provided a crucial trope for expressing theatre's patriotic mission
after 1789. Even as old rules and customs fell with the walls of
the Bastille, dramatic works by Gouges, Chenier, La Harpe, and
others depicted the cloister as a space for reimagining forms of
familial, individual, and civic belonging and exclusion. By
relating the dramatic trope of religious life to shifting concepts
of gender, family, religiosity, and nation, Curulla sheds light on
how the process of secularization played out in the cultural space
of French theatre.
A comedy about tragedy and a play about playmaking, Aristophanes'
Frogs (405 BCE) is perhaps the most popular of ancient comedies.
This new introduction guides students through the play, its themes
and contemporary contexts, and its reception history. Frogs offers
sustained engagement with the Athenian literary scene, with the
politics of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, and with
the religious understanding of the fifth-century city. It presents
the earliest direct criticism of theatre and a detailed description
of the Underworld, and also dramatizes the place of Mystery cults
in the religious life of Athens and shows the political concerns
that galvanized the citizens. It is also genuinely funny,
showcasing a range of comic techniques, including literary and
musical parody, political invective, grotesque distortion,
wordplay, prop comedy, and funny costumes. Frogs has inspired
literary works by Henry Fielding, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom
Stoppard. This book explores all of these features in a series of
short chapters designed to be accessible to a new reader of ancient
comedy. It proceeds linearly through the play, addressing a range
of issues, but paying particular attention to stagecraft and
performance. It also offers a bold new interpretation of the play,
suggesting that the action of Frogs was not the first time
Euripides and Aeschylus had competed against each other.
This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian
writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author's
early years influence his life's work and how his writing, in turn,
informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life,
major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka's legacy with
global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed
beyond the African continent. Covering his encounters with the
widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate
corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the
North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this
comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure
whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the
public sphere, as well as one of Africa's most successful and
popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka's
work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues
that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite
civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social
engineering.
Seneca's Characters addresses one of the most enduring and least
theorised elements of literature: fictional character and its
relationship to actual, human selfhood. Where does the boundary
between character and person lie? While the characters we encounter
in texts are obviously not 'real' people, they still possess
person-like qualities that stimulate our attention and engagement.
How is this relationship formulated in contexts of theatrical
performance, where characters are set in motion by actual people,
actual bodies and voices? This book addresses such questions by
focusing on issues of coherence, imitation, appearance and
autonomous action. It argues for the plays' sophisticated treatment
of character, their acknowledgement of its purely fictional
ontology alongside deep - and often dark - appreciation of its
quasi-human qualities. Seneca's Characters offers a fresh
perspective on the playwright's powerful tragic aesthetics that
will stimulate scholars and students alike.
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