Circus as Multimodal Discourse : Performance, Meaning, and Ritual

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bouissac, Paul.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Circus--Social aspects.

Discourse analysis--Social aspects.

Modality (Linguistics).

Multimedia communications.

Performing arts--Semiotics.

Semiotics.

Visual communication.

Circus.

Performing arts.

Discourse analysis.

Local Subjects:

Circus--Social aspects.

Discourse analysis--Social aspects.

Modality (Linguistics).

Multimedia communications.

Performing arts--Semiotics.

Semiotics.

Visual communication.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It concludes w

Contents:

Cover; HalfTitle; Series; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Introduction: Playing with Fire; 1 Circus Performances as Rituals: Participative Ethnography; Circus online; Circus in the field; The spectator as ethnographer; Circus as ritual; 2 The "Textility" of Circus Acts: Disentangling Cognition and Pleasure; Writing circus: From performance to text; Events and their verbal accounts; Scripts, skills, and algorithms: The birth of a circus act; Description and explanation; Disentangling meanings, emotions, and pleasure: Textility and cognitive malleability; 3 Magic in the Ring

Veils of illusionBelief and disbelief; The mechanisms of miracles and the logic of illusions; A double-edged skill; 4 Horses which Speak, Count, and Laugh; The cultured horse; An equine performance on record; A multimodal dialogic discourse; Themes and variations: A cowboy and his horse; Pragmatics of the "educated" horse act: A biosemiotic perspective; 5 Steeds and Symbols: Multimodal Metaphors; Circus horses: From the steppe to the ring; A semiotic perspective: Making sense of things; The social contract and the birth of the arts; Once upon a time: A play of nature and culture

The ascent of the horseTextualizing the horse; Equestrians as cultural heroes; 6 The Staging of Actions: Heroes, Antiheroes, and Animal Actors; A theory of action; The modalities of actions: From doing to making another do; Ironical discourse: A dog act in the semiotic square; 7 Circus Animals as Symbols, Actors, and Persons; In the company of animals; The representation of animals in cultures; Animal agencies: Legal and moral issues; A cultural paradigm shift : Animals as nonhuman persons; 8 Dancing with Tigers, Lying with Lions: Translating Biology into Art; Tigers in the wild

The fifth dimension of spaceFrom biology to art; The poetics and rhetoric of the cage act; The lion's anger; A master at work; A work of art; 9 Clowns at Work: A Sociocritical Discourse; Clowns unmasked; Clowns at work; Syntax and semantics of chaos: Herbert Marcuse at the circus; Power of the mask; What is a gag and how it works: A conversation; 10 The Imaginary Circus; Romancing the circus; The circus as a phantasm; The ascent of the clown; Circus mystics: The juggler and the funambulist; 11 Ideology and Politics in the Circus Ring; Poetics and politics of the body

Erotic circus: The tame and the wildIdeology, politics, and propaganda; The body politic in performance; 12 The Postanimal Circus; A cultural revolution: The animal liberation movement; The new circus: Human, humane, and humanitarian; Circus and subversion: From anticircus to counterculture and activism; The return of the animal?; Conclusion: Pleasures of the Circus: Attraction, Emotion, and Addiction; Truth and deception; The logic of attraction; Information, fear, and empathy; Games, rewards, and addiction; Performance, ritual, and meaning; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

ISBN:

1-283-70614-8

1-4411-0261-2

OCLC:

818117736