Theater as Problem : Modern Drama and Its Place in Literature / Benjamin Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Benjamin, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drama--19th century--History and criticism.

Drama.

Drama--20th century--History and criticism.

Theater.

Literary Studies.

Performing Arts & Drama.

Local Subjects:

Literary Studies.

Performing Arts & Drama.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (296 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Using examples ranging from nineteenth-century Viennese comedy to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's atomic-age theater, Benjamin Bennett explores what is at stake in the theory of drama; what sort of questioning makes up that theory; and in what direction such questioning leads.Bennett takes as his starting point the inescapably literary nature of theater in the European tradition, theater in its most concrete dimensions: as an institution, as a tradition of ritual or stylized behavior, as a particular type of physical space, as an economic venture. He maintains that, precisely because of its radical categorical disjunction from the domain of the literary, theater in the European tradition has been appropriated as the principal vehicle by which literature repeatedly problematizes itself. Theater, he says, is "the church of literature." Although he is concerned with drama as a literary type, therefore, Bennett does not treat the theory of drama as part of the theory of literature. For the special relation of drama to literature calls into question the whole idea of literary theory as a stable discourse divisible into parts.Bennett considers plays by Nestroy, Schnitzler, Ibsen, Strindberg, Brecht, Ionesco, Genet, Pirandello, Artaud, and Dürrenmatt. He focuses on such theoretical issues as the idea of generic boundaries; the relation between drama and the culture of reading; the relevance between drama and the culture of reading; the relevance of hermeneutic and semiotic views of literature to drama; and the operation of fascism as a literary phenomenon. In conclusion, he frames a problem that his readings have brought to light: at least two separate historical accounts of modern drama are necessary-theories that imply each other, yet remain irreconcilable.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Strindberg and Ibsen: Cubism, Communicative Ethics, and the Theater of Readers

2. Cinema, Theater, and Opera: Modem Drama as Hermeneutic Ceremony

3. Nestroy and Schnitzler: The Three Societies of Comedy and the Idea of a Textless Theater

4. The Church Militant: Audience and Spectator in Rhinoceros

5. The Trees Are Sentences: Semiotic Ceremony and Pirandello's Myth of the Theater

6. Approximately Five Questions on Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker

7. Conclusion: Dramatic History and the History of Drama

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Nov 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501745454

150174545X

OCLC:

1129167199