The play within the play : the performance of meta-theatre and self-reflection / edited by Gerhard Fischer, Bernhard Greiner.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fischer, Gerhard, 1945-

Greiner, Bernhard.

Series:

Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 112.

Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 0929-6999 ; 112

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Play within a play--Congresses.

Play within a play.

Drama--History and criticism--Congresses.

Drama.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (477 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play . The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting – from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy – but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play : as ultimate affirmation of the ‘self’ (the ‘Hamlet paradigm’), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.

Contents:

Preliminary Material

The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm / Bernhard Greiner

Self-Reflexivity in the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation / Yifen Beus

‘Backstage Discourse’: Staging the Other in Ethnographic and Colonial Literature / Klaus R. Scherpe

The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation / David Roberts

Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks / Caroline Sheaffer-Jones

The Figure in the Carpet: Metadramatical Concepts in Jacob Bidermann’s Cenodoxus (1602) / Christian Sinn

Holding a Mirror up to Theatre: Baro, Gougenot, Scudéry and Corneille as Self-Referentialists in Paris, 1628-35/36 / John Golder

Rehearsing the Endgame: Max Frisch’s Biography: A Play / Manfred Jurgensen

Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real Thing (1982): New Frames and Old / Barnard Turner

The Invisible Fool: Botho Strauss’s Postmodern Metadrama and the History of Theatrical Reality / Ulrike Landfester

Queen of a Bathtub: Hanoch Levin’s Political, Aesthetic and Ethical Metatheatricality / Shimon Levy

The Disguised and Distanced Real(ity) Play within the Fictitious Play in Israeli Stage-Drama / Gad Kaynar

A Lacerated Culture, A Self-Reflexive Theatre: The Case of Israeli Drama / Zahava Caspi

‘Very Tragical Mirth’: The Play within the Play as a Strategy for Interweaving Tragedy and Comedy / Frank Zipfel

Play and Reality in Austrian Drama: The Figure of the Magister Ludi / Herbert Herzmann

Playing Tragedy: Detaching Tragedy from Itself in Classical Drama from Lessing to Büchner / Helmut J. Schneider

Playwrights Playing with History: The Play within the Play and German Historical Drama (Büchner, Brecht, Weiss, Müller) / Gerhard Fischer

Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz’s Festung and Albert Ostermaier’s The Making of B-Movie / Birgit Haas

The Context Within: The Play within the Play between Theatre Anthropology, System Theory and Postcolonial Critique / Lada Cale Feldman

Intercultural Framing in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête / Maurice Blackman

Re-Interpreting Shadow Material in an Ancient Greek Myth: Another Night: Medea / Kyriaki Frantzi

John Gay and the Frame Play / Yvonne Noble

Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude / Donald Bewley

Theatrical Transformation, Media Superimposition and Scenic Reflection: Pictorial Qualities of Modern Theatre and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss Opera, Ariadne auf Naxos / Theresia Birkenhauer

Pushkin in Love, or: A (Screen)Play within the Play. The Cinematic Potential of Romantic-Ironic Narration in Eugene Onegin / Erika Greber

The Text within the Text, the Screen within the Screen: Multi-Layered Representations in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet / Alessandro Abbate

‘Gotta Dance’ (in the Dark): Lars von Trier’s Critique of the Musical Genre / Ken Woodgate

The Game of the Narrative: Kleist’s Fiction from a Game-Theoretical Perspective / Tim Mehigan

French Beans and Mashed Potatoes: Agonistic Play and Symbolic Acting in Gottfried Keller’s Prose Fiction / Alexander Honold

Playing with the Apparatus: Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and Barrie Kosky’s Interpretation for the Melbourne International Arts Festival / Ulrike Garde

Notes on Contributors

Index of Names.

Notes:

Selection of papers delivered at the 2004 Sydney German Studies Symposium and revised and edited for publication.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-26579-2

9786612265822

94-012-0484-5

1-4356-1258-2

OCLC:

714568427

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401204842 DOI