Does satire have the ability to effect social reform? If so, what satiric style is most effective in bringing about reform? This book explores how Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson negotiated contemporary pressures to forge a satiric persona and style uniquely his own. These pressures were especially intense while Jonson was engaged in the Poetomachia, or Poets' War (1598-1601), which pitted him against rival writers John Marston and Thomas Dekker. As a struggle between satiric styles, this conflict poses compelling questions about the nature and potential of satire during the Renaissance. In particular, this book explores how Jonson forged a moderate Horatian satiric style he championed as capable of effective social reform. As part of his distinctive model, Jonson turned to the metaphor of purging, in opposition to the metaphors of stinging, barking, biting, and whipping employed by his Juvenalian rivals. By integrating this conception of satire into his Horatian poetics, Jonson sought to avoid the pitfalls of the aggressive, violent style of his rivals while still effectively critiquing vice, upholding his model as a means for the reformation not only of society, but of satire itself.

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.

***Listed in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION's Weekly Book List, July 11, 2011***

Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, "Urban Drama" examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century. In plays as different as Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," Anna Deavere Smith's "Twilight Los Angeles, 1992," and David Henry Hwang's "FOB," these concerns became spatialized against the urban environment, suggesting a shift of consciousness toward what critical geography has argued: The social is always spatial. "Urban Drama" interrogates how this shift informs playwriting in the 1980s and 1990s and inspires new modes of dramatic representation.

This is the first collection of scholarly essays dedicated to an assessment of this playwright's prodigious body of work. The 13 essays--12 original and one revised and expanded for this volume--present the most timely and provocative thinking on Horovitz's canon (more than 50 plays), and address such subjects as ethnicity; violence; feminism; social commitment; the role of mythology; the influence of Aeschylus, Beckett, Ionesco, O'Neill, and Albee; and Horovitz's contribution to American drama. Also included are an interview with the playwright conducted by the editor specifically for this collection, a comprehensive chronology of his life and productions, and the most current primary and selected secondary bibliography.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

A comprehensive introduction to John Ford's ??i??Tis Pity She's a Whore??i?? - introducing its critical history, performance history, the current critical landscape and new directions in research on the play. John Ford's tragedy ??i??Tis Pity She's A Whore??i?? was first performed between 1629 and 1633 and since then its themes of incest, love versus duty and forbidden passion have made it a widely studied and performed, if controversial, play. This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including TV and film adaptations. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research. ??i??Continuum Renaissance Drama??i?? offers practical and accessible introductions to the critical and performative contexts of key Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Each guide introduces the text's critical and performance history but also provides students with an invaluable insight into the landscape of current scholarly research through a keynote essay on the state of the art and newly commissioned essays of fresh research from different critical perspectives.

This publication examines over 125 American, English, Irish and Anglo-Indian plays by 70 dramatists which were published in 14 American general interest periodicals aimed at the middle-class reader and consumer.

This collection of essays on Goethe's Faust by prominent American and German scholars explores the work's significance in the context of recent historical, political, and scholarly developments and points to new directions for research. Topics include translation (into Indo-European languages), Faust's relationship to Mephistopheles, Faust and the feminine, sexual imagery, gothic allusions, musical representations of Faust, political and moral implications, Faust in the contemporary theatre, devils in German literature, Faust in the continuing debate over modern and postmodern, Goethe's stylistic use of complementary points of view, and his use of myth.

In August, 1959, an anxious William Rueckert wrote Kenneth Burke to ask, "When on earth is that perpetually 'forthcoming' A Symbolic of Motives forthcoming? Will it be soon enough so that I can wait for it before I complete my book Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations]? If the Symbolic is not forthcoming soon, would it be too much trouble for you to send me a list of exactly what will be included in the book, and some idea of the structure of the book?" Burke replied, "Holla If you're uncomfortable, think how uncomfortable I am. But I'll do the best I can. . . ." In the course of their long correspondence, the nature of the Symbolic-Burke's much-anticipated third volume in his Motivorum trilogy-vexed both men, and they discussed its contents often. Ultimately, Burke left the job of pulling it all together to Rueckert. Forty-eight years after they first discussed the Symbolic, Rueckert has fulfilled his end of the bargain with this book, Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950-1955. ESSAYS TOWARD A SYMBOLIC OF MOTIVES, 1950--1955 contains the work Burke planned to include in the third book in his Motivorum trilogy, which began with A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950). In these essays-some of which appear here in print for the first time-Burke offers his most precise and elaborated account of his dramatistic poetics, providing readers with representative analyses of such writers as Aeschylus, Goethe, Hawthorne, Roethke, Shakespeare, and Whitman. Following Rueckert's Introduction, Burke lays out his approach in essays that theorize and illustrate the method, which he considered essential for understanding language as symbolic action and human relations generally. Burke concludes with a focused account of humans as symbol-using and misusing animals and then offers his tour de force reading of Goethe's Faust. About the Author KENNETH BURKE (1897-1993) is the author of many books, including the landmark predecessors in the Motivorum trilogy: A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950). He has been hailed as one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century and possibly the greatest rhetorician since Cicero. Paul Jay refers to him as "the most theoretically challenging, unorthodox, and sophisticated of twentieth-century speculators on literature and culture." Geoffrey Hartman praises him as "the wild man of American criticism." According to Scott McLemee, Burke may have "accidentally create d] cultural studies." About the Editor William H. Rueckert, the "Dean of Burke Studies," has authored or edited numerous groundbreaking books and articles on Kenneth Burke, including the landmark study, Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations (1963, 1982). His correspondence with Burke was collected in Letters from Kenneth Burke to William H. Rueckert, 1959-1987 (Parlor, 2003). His most recent book is Faulkner From Within-Destructive and Generative Being in the Novels of William Faulkner (Parlor, 2004).

John Lyly was undisputed master of the private theatre stage in the 1570s and 1580s. Lyly's "Endymion" (1588) represents his famous Euphuistic style at its best and also gives us vintage Lyly as courtier and dramatist. In this love comedy, Lyly retells an ancient legend of the prolonged sleep of the man with whom the moon (Cynthia) fell in love. The fable is piquantly relevant to Queen Elizabeth and her exasperated if adoring courtiers. This edition makes a new and compelling argument for the relevance of "Endymion" to the threat of the Spanish Armada invasion of 1588 and to the role of the Earl of Oxford in England's politics of that troubled decade. Full commentary is provided on every aspect of the play, including its philosophical allegory about the relation of the moon to mortal life on earth.

This is an investigation of Yeats's experiments with the media of language and dance in his plays. He was allied to other artists of the 1890s in his fascination with the biblical dancer Salome and in his preoccupation with things Japanese, particularly "Noh" theatre with its central dance. The impact of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes also played its part in influencing Yeats's drama and he took interest in the "dance-as-meaning" debate. The book contains new data on Yeats's "At the Hawk's Well" dancer, Ito and new information on his personal acquaintance with music-hall and Ballets Russes from yet unpublished letters.

No dramatist in the recent history of the American theatre has gained more celebrity than Sam Shepard. Exploring a career that includes fifty stage and screen plays, four books of nondramatic writings, and over a dozen appearances in feature films, this work traces Shepard's rise from an Off-Off-Broadway renegade to a Hollywood leading man, and explores his evolution from counterculture to cultural icon. The study situates Shepard's career within the shifting production modes and economic contexts of the American entertainment industry, and views his popularity against the identity politics of postwar American culture. Through an analysis of his life, plays and screen roles, this book investigates how Shepard's dramatic voice and film persona address issues of American consensus and community. The study argues that Shepard's popularity--in an era of cultural diversification and dissent--owes much to nationalism and nostalgia and begs important questions concerning American myths, media representations, and the construction of an American audience.

This book investigates how the Children of Paul's (1599-1606) and the Children of the Queen's Revels (1600-13) defined their players as children and, via an analysis of their plays and theatrical practices, it examines early modern theatre as a site in which children have the opportunity to articulate their emerging selfhoods.

ARCHIDAMUS. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia. CAMILLO. I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.

The problem of language constituted the most contentious subject of the philosophies and human sciences in the twentieth-century and drove what came to be known as the "linguistic turn" to Western thought. Phenomenology, linguistics, analytic philosophy, speech act theory, anthropology, psychology, poststructuralism, media studies, and ordinary language philosophy-all addressed language as the primary vehicle of human thought and communication, and queried whether any accurate linguistic representation of reality were possible. The sound of the human voice lay at the center of the debate. The central question raised by Husserl's phenomenology and de Saussure's linguistics, and discussed throughout the century, concerned whether the sounds of the voice were intrinsic to meaning or were simply relative. In a related phenomenon, vocal experimentation marked the twentieth-century avant garde, which included the nonsense verbal texts of Dada; the electronic mediations of Samuel Beckett and Peter Handke; and the playful, ironic, and confrontational performances of Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, and the Wooster Group. The experiments mirrored the fixation with voice and language as expressed in the philosophies and sciences. Yet despite the centrality of the voice for the philosophy of language, linguistic study, and performance, no book-length study before now has focused solely on vocal expression. The voice ranks with gesture as one of two media of communication available to every fully able-bodied human being, and yet theatre studies tends to take a visual approach to its objects of critique: the body, the dramatic text, and the mise-en-scene. Because the voice registers as a crucial media of expression in the theatre, theatre studies also can provide valuable contributions to the discussion of voice and language undertaken in other disciplines. The theatre as a social and public art form reveals a great deal about what we think and feel in regards to our communications with each other. This is the first book of theatre studies to identify and articulate theories of voice as expressed in the philosophies, human sciences, and physical sciences of the twentieth century. It also identifies parallels between the theories and the vocal practices of twentieth-century performances that shared similar concerns with issues of language and mediation. This book adopts as a central premise that the introduction and proliferation of electronic forms of communication stimulated the interest in voice and language in the scholarly discourses of the twentieth century and stimulated as well the fascination with the sounds of the voice as expressed in the twentieth-century avant garde. Dramatic Theories of Voice in the Twentieth Century is the only book of theatre and performance studies to address the sounds of the human voice and as such ranks as an invaluable addition to all theatre, philosophy, performance studies, communications, and cultural studies collections.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Dennis Potter is the most well-known, respected and controversial television dramatist Britain has ever produced. Plays and serials such as The Singing Detective and Pennies From Heaven received huge critical acclaim whilst always attracting audiences in their millions. This book will critically analyse both the strengths and the weaknesses of Potter's oeuvre, whilst investigating his status as both an 'author' and a 'celebrity'. Re-examining the drama, it foregrounds its ambiguities and contradictions, whilst clarifying the complex mixture of themes, styles and techniques which produced its distinctive and often provocative appeal.

This study focuses on themes and techniques of empowerment in the full range of produced plays by Caryl Churchill from 1960 to the present. The playwright is well known for combining theatrical inventiveness with uncompromising social critique. She is one of the very few contemporary women playwrights to have achieved international prominence, and she has done so on the basis of a forthright socialist-feminist stand.

Beckett and Philosophy examines and interrogates the relationships between Samuel Beckett's works and contemporary French and German thought. There are two wide-ranging overview chapters by Richard Begam (Beckett and Postfoundationalism) and Robert Eaglestone (Beckett via Literary and Philosophical Theories), and individual chapters on Beckett, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, Badious, Merleau-Pointy, Adorno, Hebermas, Heidegger and Nietzsche. The collection takes a fresh look as issues such as postmodern and poststructuralist thought in relation to Beckett studies, providing useful overview chapters and original essays.

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.

Aristotle's neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past - arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their "emplotments" (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction. Written by experts who teach in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the United States, the articles provide a thorough interpretation of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon, demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples from France, Russia, England, Italy, and the Netherlands.

This new volume in the "Author Chronologies" series traces the daily activities of the Nobel Prize winning author and playwright Harold Pinter 1930-2008]. It is based upon published and unpublished materials and discussion with his close friends, and is the most detailed chronological account of Pinter to appear to date. As such, it will influence future scholarship and criticism, and is an invaluable reference tool for all Pinter students and scholars.

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.

From his first unscripted appearance on an Off-Broadway stage in the revolutionary 1960s to the frontpage news of his death from AIDS in 1987 at age 44 Charles Ludlam embodied a and helped to engender a the upheavals of his time. The astonishing life and legacy of this force to be reckoned with are at last revealed in ERIDICULOUS!E a literary biography of an American comic genius. After founding the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967 Ludlam sustained an ever-shifting troupe of bohemian players through two decades of perennially daunting circumstances by writing 29 plays a plays that he starred in and directed as well. While Ludlam's work has become increasingly popular at regional theatres on college campuses and on stages throughout the world his gender-bending theories and wide-ranging cultural impact have reached far beyond Bette Midler the original cast members of ESaturday Night LiveE and the countless other artists he influenced during his abbreviated lifetime. Like his early plays Ludlam's life was rife with the sex drugs and creative experimentation that characterized the freewheeling '60s and '70s. Based on a decade of research and interviews with more than 150 people who knew or worked with Ludlam a including all of the major players in his troupe and seven of his lovers a ERIDICULOUS!E recreates the dramatic life of an inimitable and subversive theatrical master with you-are-there intensity.THWinner of the LAMBDA Literary Award for Biography and the Theatre Library Association Award for Outstanding Theatre Book of the YearTH David Kaufman makes a persuasive case for Ludlam's being a genius ... As a record of Ludlam's life and the theatrical world in which he was both guru and grandmaster this book is informed and passionate. THa Mel Gussow EThe New York TimesETH A fascinating portrait of an authentic stage genius and the New York avant-garde scene in which he toiled with such demented and dedicated diligence. THa PlaybillTH The phenom who inspired everyone from Bette Midler and Madeline Kahn to Tony Kushner and Paul Rudnick was no box of chocolates a which as reading experiences go makes his story all the sweeter. THa EVanity FairETH This is one helluva piece of work. THa Marilyn Stasio Variety.com

Sean O'Casey is recognized as one of the most important Irish playwrights of the 20th century. When he was in his early 20s, he committed himself to the nationalist struggle to free Ireland from English domination. During the Dublin General Strike and Lock-Out of 1913, he came to appreciate the importance of social class, and he rejected Irish nationalism in favor of international socialism. Though "The Shadow of a Gunman" and "Juno and the Paycock" helped save the Abbey Theatre from near bankruptcy, "The Plough and the Stars" drew open criticism in 1926, when nationalists rioted over O'Casey's treatment of the Easter Rebellion.

This reference work is a comprehensive guide to O'Casey's plays. The volume begins with an introductory essay that discusses the political themes of his plays, the controversy surrounding his works in Ireland, the response to his plays in England and other countries, and the growth of academic interest in O'Casey in the 1960s. Plot summaries and critical overviews are provided for all of his dramatic works, and production credits are given for major performances of his plays. The volume includes extensive annotated bibliographical information for secondary sources, including reviews.