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Includes the full German text, accompanied by German-English
vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the
work in its social and historical context.
Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modem
stage, Mother Courage and Her Children is Bertolt Brecht's most
passionate and profound statement against war. Set in the
seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling ("Mother
Courage"), an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and
her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious
wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and
death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the
one thing in which she truly believes--her ramshackle wagon with
its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself
in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her
strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring
figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the
most extraordinary characters in literature.
Brecht projects an ancient Chinese story onto a realistic setting
in Soviet Georgia. In a theme that echoes the Judgment of Solomon,
two women argue over the possession of a child. Thanks to the
unruly judge, Azdak (one of Brecht's most vivid creations) natural
justice is done and the peasant Grusha keeps the child she loves,
even though she is not its mother. Written while Brecht was in
exile in the United States during the Second World War, The
Caucasian Chalk Circle is a politically charged, much-revived and
complex example of Brecht's epic theatre. This new Student Edition
contains introductory commentary and notes by Kristopher Imbrigotta
from the University of Puget Sound, US, offering a much-needed
contemporary perspective on the play. The introduction covers: -
narrative structure: play about a play within a play ("circle") -
songs and music - justice and social systems - context: Brecht,
exile, WWII, socialism - notions of collective and class - fable
and story adaptation, folk fairy tale
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
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The Good Person Of Szechwan (Paperback)
Bertolt Brecht; Edited by Charlotte Ryland, Tom Kuhn; Translated by John Willett; Volume editing by Tom Kuhn, …
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R352
Discovery Miles 3 520
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'Brecht's dark, dazzling world-view...makes an absolutely
devastating impact. The play is fuelled by the brilliant perception
that everyone requires such a dual or split personality to
survive.' Evening Standard Three gods come to earth hoping to
discover one really good person. No one can be found until they
meet Shen Te, a prostitute with a heart of gold. Rewarded by the
gods, she gives up her profession and buys a tabacco shop but finds
it is impossible to survive as a good person in a corrupt world
without the support of her ruthless alter ego Shui Ta. Brecht's
parable of good and evil was first performed in 1943 and remains
one of his most popular and frequently produced plays worldwide.
This Student Edition features an extensive introduction and
commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context,
themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for
further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the
perfect edition for students of theatre and literature.
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Love Poems (Hardcover)
Bertolt Brecht; Translated by David Constantine, Tom Kuhn; Foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall
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R608
Discovery Miles 6 080
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Even in Germany, the true scope and force of Bertolt Brecht s
poetry did not become apparent until long after his death in 1956,
and even today, so many of his more than 2,000 poems have never
appeared in English. Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental
undertaking by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate his
poetic legacy into English, positions Brecht, the author of Mother
Courage and The Threepenny Opera, not merely as one of the most
famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely
creative twentieth-century poet, one of the best in the whole of
German literature. With a personal foreword by his own daughter,
Barbara Brecht-Schall, Love Poems features 78 astonishing and
deeply personal love poems many addressed to particular women that
reveal Brecht as lover and love poet whose bitter struggle to keep
faith, hope, and love alive during desperate times represents the
essence of human relationships."
This new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett
translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine
Hollander, which explores the following: * Contexts (Thirty Years
War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential
figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin
Michaelis) * Themes (war; nature; capitalism) * Dramatic devices
(epic theatre) * Production history and critical reception *
Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist) * Further
study Widely regarded as Brecht's best work, Mother Courage and her
Children was written in 1938-9 and received its premiere in Zurich
in 1941. Mother Courage - a canteen woman serving with the Swedish
Army during the Thirty Years War (1618-48) - follows the armies,
selling provisions and liquor to the troops. Both her sons die in
the war and her dumb daughter, Kattrin, is mortally wounded as she
beats a drum to warn the town of Halle of an impending attack. Yet,
all the while, Mother Courage continues her travels with her wagon,
indomitably businesslike, calculating how she can make material
profit from the war and turn conflict into capital.
Brecht's series of twenty-four interconnected playlets describe
events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s.
They dramatise with clinical precision the suspicion and anxiety
experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as
the power of Hitler grew. Written in exile in Denmark and first
staged in 1938 it was inspired in part by his recent trip to Moscow
where he had been researching tasks for the anti-Nazi effort. This
Student Edition features an extensive introduction and commentary
and includes: a chronology of the Brecht's life and work; a
synopsis of each playlet; an introduction to the context of the
play; commentary on themes, characters, style and language; a
review of the play in performance; notes on individual words and
phrases in the text, and questions for further study.
The city burns in the heat of civil war and a servant girl
sacrifices everything to protect an abandoned child. But when peace
is finally restored, the boy's mother comes to claim him. Calling
upon the ancient tradition of the Chalk Circle, a comical judge
sets about resolving the dispute. But in a culture of corruption
and deception, who wins? Written by the grand master of
storytelling and peopled with vivid and amusing characters, this is
one of the greatest plays of the last century. This Caucasian Chalk
Circle is translated by award-winning writer Alistair Beaton, who
also wrote the bitingly witty stage play Feelgood and the
celebrated TV dramas The Trial of Tony Blair and A Very Social
Secretary. The play was toured by Shared Experience in 2009.
This Student Edition of Brecht's classic satire on the rise of
Hitler features an extensive introduction and commentary that
includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes,
characters, style and language as well as questions for further
study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect
edition for students of theatre and literature.Described by Brecht
as 'a gangster play that would recall certain events familiar to us
all', Arturo Ui is a witty and savage satire of the rise of Hitler
-- recast by Brecht into a small-time Chicago gangster's takeover
of the city's greengrocery trade. Using a wide range of parody and
pastiche - from Al Capone to Shakespeare's Richard III and Goethe's
Faust - Brecht's compelling parable continues to have relevance
wherever totalitarianism appears today. Written during the Second
World War in 1941, the play was one of the Berliner Ensemble's most
outstanding box-office successes in 1959, and has continued to
attract a succession of major actors, including Leonard Rossiter,
Christopher Plummer, Antony Sher and Al Pacino.
Brecht's series of twenty-four interconnected playlets describe
events which took place in ordinary German households in the 1930s.
They dramatize with clinical precision the suspicion and anxiety
experienced by ordinary people, particularly Jewish citizens, as
the power of Hitler grew.
This volume is translated by John Willett, joint editor of
Brecht's collected plays in English and is accompanied by an
extensive introduction and commentary.
"What Brecht shows us here is more or less harmless by
comparison with what came later. Perhaps this is its greatest
strength: we know the results, what we are looking for is the
beginnings."-Max Frisch
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Aesthetics and Politics (Paperback)
Fredric Jameson; Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, …
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R323
R294
Discovery Miles 2 940
Save R29 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of
major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in
German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and
Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over
literature and art during these years are assembled in a single
volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous,
interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of
twentieth-century intellectual history.
Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt
Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative
editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.The fifth volume
in the Brecht Collected Plays series brings together two of
Brecht's best-known and most frequently performed and studied
plays: Life of Galileo and Mother Courage and Her Children.
Galileo, which examines the conflict between free inquiry and
official ideology, contains one of Brecht's most human and complex
central characters. Temporarily silenced by the Inquisition's
threat of torture, and forced to abjure his theories publicly,
Galileo continues to work in private, eventually smuggling his work
out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not
only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when
brought into conflict with the requirements of government or
official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals. The translations
are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied
by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett
and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all
the important textual variants.
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The Threepenny Opera (Paperback)
Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill; As told to Elisabeth Hauptmann; Edited by Anja Hartl; Translated by John Willett, …
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R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The
Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am
Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble).
Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the
play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic,
but set in a mock-Victorian Soho. With Kurt Weill's music, which
was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce
the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout
the western world. This new edition is published here in John
Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and
notes by Anja Hartl.
In this new translation of Brecht's great 1939 anti-war play
'Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder' by the distinguished Scottish poet
Tom Leonard, the Thirty Years War becomes the War on Terror and
Mother Courage is a working-class woman from the West of Scotland
speaking in the broad, bold Glaswegian dialect. It is a play about
the language of politics and the politics of language.
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Love Poems (Paperback)
Bertolt Brecht; Translated by David Constantine, Tom Kuhn; Foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall
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R439
R412
Discovery Miles 4 120
Save R27 (6%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Even in Germany, the scope and force of Bertolt Brecht's poetry did
not become apparent until long after his death and today, many of
his more than 2,000 poems have never appeared in English. Love
Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by David
Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate his poetic legacy into
English, positions Brecht not only as one of the most famous
playwrights of the twentieth century but also as a fiercely
creative twentieth-century poet, one of the best in German
literature. With a foreword by his daughter; Love Poems features 78
astonishing and deeply personal love poems that reveal Brecht as
lover and love poet whose struggle to keep faith, hope and love
alive during desperate times represents the essence of human
relationships.
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Tales of Mr. Keuner (Paperback)
James Reidel; Illustrated by Ulf K; Bertolt Brecht
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R566
R524
Discovery Miles 5 240
Save R42 (7%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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From the 1920s through the 1950s, Bertolt Brecht wrote a number of
short, fictionalized comments on contemporary life, politics, and
thought. Through the dramatic events of the first half of the
twentieth century, Brecht's Mr. Keuner offered up aphorisms, stray
thoughts, and fragments of anecdote that punctured contemporary
self-regard about religion, politics, business, and more.
Deceptively light in tone, and bite-size in presentation, Mr.
Keuner's comments bring Brecht's lacerating wit to bear on a wide
range of the half-truths and public lies of his era. This graphic
novel adaptation sets a number of Brecht's Mr. Keuner pieces, newly
translated, alongside cartoons by German artist Ulf K., whose
spare, abstract style lends force to the underlying meanings of
Keuner's pronouncements.
In this chronicle of the European Thirty Years War and taking place
between the years 1624 and 1636, Mother Courage follows the armies
back and forth across Europe, selling provisions and liquor from
her canteen wagon to whomever she can. One by one she loses her
children to the war but will not part with her livelihood - the
wagon. The Berlin production of 1949, with Helene Weigel as Mother
Courage, marked the foundation of the Berliner Ensemble. Considered
by many to be one of the greatest anti-war plays ever written and
Brecht's masterpiece, the play is a powerful example of Epic
Theatre and Brecht's use of alienation effect to focus attention
not on individual characters but on the issues of the play. This
edition published in Methuen Drama's Modern Classics series offers
a full introduction as well as Brecht's own notes and textual
variants, setting it apart from all other editions available in the
English language. The play is presented in John Willett's trusted
translation. 'One of the greatest poets and dramatists of our
century' (Observer).
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