The persistence of allegory : drama and neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner / Jane K. Brown.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brown, Jane K., 1943-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

European drama--History and criticism.

European drama.

Neoclassicism (Literature)--Europe.

Neoclassicism (Literature).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (305 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Drama and neoclassicism from Shakespeare to Wagner

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Pennsylvania Press ; Bristol : University Presses Marketing [distributor], 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In an impressively comparative work, Jane K. Brown explores the tension in European drama between allegory and neoclassicism from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Imitation of nature is generally thought to triumph over religious allegory in the Elizabethan and French classical theater, a shift attributable to the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the Renaissance. But if Aristotle's terminology was rapidly assimilated, Brown demonstrates that change in dramatic practice took place only gradually and partially and that allegory was never fully cast off the stage. The book traces a complex history of neoclassicism in which new allegorical forms flourish and older ones are constantly revitalized. Brown reveals the allegorical survivals in the works of such major figures as Shakespeare, Calderón, Racine, Vondel, Metastasio, Goethe, and Wagner and reads tragedy, comedy, masque, opera, and school drama together rather than as separate developments. Throughout, she draws illuminating parallels to modes of representation in the visual arts. A work of broad interest to scholars, teachers, and students of theatrical form, The Persistence of Allegory presents a fundamental rethinking of the history of European drama.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Claude's Allegories and Literary Neoclassicism

Chapter 3. Secular Tragedy: Neoclassicism in the Sixteenth Century

Chapter 4. Allegory and Passion: Latin Dramatic Forms in the Seventeenth Century

Chapter 5. The Allegorical Idioms of the Illusionist Stage: Spectacle in the Seventeenth Century

Chapter 6. Opera and Dance: The Revival of Greek Tragedy

Chapter 7. The Greek Revival: German Classicism and the Recovery of Spoken Drama

Chapter 8. Wagner and the Death of Gesamtkunstwerk

Coda: "This Insubstantial Pageant"

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780812201475

0812201477

OCLC:

859161110