Postmodern Brecht

Postmodern Brecht PDF

Author: Elizabeth Wright

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-08-19

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1134833377

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In this radical and deliberately controversial re-reading of Brecht, first published in 1989, Elizabeth Wright takes a new view of the playwright, giving us a more ‘Brechtian’ reading than so far achieved and making his work historically relevant here and now. The author discusses in detail Brecht’s principle theories and concepts in the light of poststructuralist theory, and reassess the aesthetics and politics with regard to Marxist critics of his own day. Wright includes a re-reading of Brecht’s early works, which presents them in relation to a postmodern theatre, and gives critical analyses of the work of Pina Bausch, Robert Wilson, and Heiner Müller, who use the techniques of performance theatre, showing how they deconstruct Brecht’s distinction between illusion and reality and point to a postmodern understanding of their dialectical relation.

After Brecht

After Brecht PDF

Author: Janelle G. Reinelt

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780472084081

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How contemporary British political theater has evolved and expanded from the legacy of Bertolt Brecht

Brecht and Critical Theory

Brecht and Critical Theory PDF

Author: Sean Carney

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-24

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1000143228

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Arguing that Brecht’s aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht’s aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams. Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose vital importance for the present is located in decentred theories of subjectivity. Brecht and Critical Theory maps the many ways in which Brechtian thinking pervades critical thought today, informing the critical tools and stances that make up the contemporary study of aesthetics.

Performing Brecht

Performing Brecht PDF

Author: Margaret Eddershaw

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-08-27

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1134895402

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Performing Brecht is an unprecedented history of the productions of Brecht's plays in Britain over forty years. Margaret Eddershaw surveys all aspects of Brecht in performance, from his methodologies to his place in postmodernist theatre and beyond. She focuses on key productions by directors including George Devine, Sam Wanamaker, William Gaskill, Howard Davies, John Dexter and Richard Eyre. Eddershaw also provides three in-depth case studies of productions in the 1990s, incorporating her own exclusive access to the rehearsals and in-depth interviews with directors and performers. The case studies are: * The Good Person of Sechuan, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Fiona Shaw; * Mother Courage, directed by Philip Prowse and starring Glenda Jackson; * The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Di Trevis and starring Antony Sher

Post-Imperial Brecht

Post-Imperial Brecht PDF

Author: Loren Kruger

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-08-19

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780521817080

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Post-Imperial Brecht challenges prevailing views of Brecht's theatre and politics. Kruger focuses much of her analysis in regions where Brecht has had special resonance, including East Germany, and South Africa, where Brechtian philosophy has been vigorously employed in the anti-apartheid movement. Kruger also analyses political interpretations of Brecht in light of other key dramatists, including Heiner MÜller and Athol Fugard. The book also examines Brechtian influence on writers and philosophers such as Adorno, Benjamin, and Barthes.

Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama

Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama PDF

Author: Mufti Mudasir

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-06-26

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 1443862932

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The book is a study of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, arguably the two most eminent British playwrights of the past sixty years or so, from a perspective of what it describes as a poetics of postmodern drama. Arguing for the application of Linda Hutcheon’s model of postmodernism to the study of drama, Towards a Poetics of Postmodern Drama shows that postmodern drama should be seen as a self-consciously contradictory and double-coded phenomenon, one which simultaneously inscribes and subverts the conventional categories of dramatic representation. In spite of its indebtedness to Beckett’s Absurdist and Brecht’s Epic theaters, postmodern drama should not be conflated with either. This is primarily because postmodern drama retains a critical edge towards contemporary reality in a manner which Hutcheon very aptly terms as a ‘complicitous critique’. The book demonstrates that both Pinter and Stoppard are pre-eminently postmodern in their treatment of issues such as the human subject, the notion of truth, historical verifiability and linguistic reference. Pinter’s preoccupation with non-referential modes of language-use, the role of power in the construction of the subject, and unreliable memories is as potent a way of disrupting the representational status of drama as Stoppard’s repeated recourse to devices such as parody, theater-within-theater and the fictional treatment of history.

The Cambridge Companion to Brecht

The Cambridge Companion to Brecht PDF

Author: Peter Thomson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-12-21

Total Pages: 29

ISBN-13: 1139827731

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This updated Companion offers students crucial guidance on virtually every aspect of the work of this complex and controversial writer. It brings together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners, and this edition introduces more voices and themes. The opening essays place Brecht's creative work in its historical and biographical context and are followed by chapters on single texts, from The Threepenny Opera to The Caucasian Chalk Circle, on some early plays and on the Lehrstücke. Other essays analyse Brecht's directing, his poetry, his interest in music and his work with actors. This revised edition also contains additional essays on his early experience of cabaret, his significance in the development of film theory and his unique approach to dramaturgy. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this provocative overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke.

Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994

Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994 PDF

Author: Deborah L. Madsen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-20

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 9004647287

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This is the first bibliography of Postmodernism to take account of work published in all subject areas and in all languages. Deborah Madsen has identified a new first occurrence of the term in 1926, preceding by more than twenty years the first occurence documented by the Oxford English Dictionary. In a chronological listing, books, articles, notes, letters and working papers on Postmodernism are described with full bibliographical details. Reviews of major books are documented and full contents listings are given for special issues of journals devoted to Postmodernism. An appendix includes books on Postmodernism announced for publication in 1995. This bibliography brings together in one place all secondary material published on Postmodernism. All disciplines are included, from anthropology to zoology: architecture, cultural studies, dance, drama, feminism, fiction, geography, history, legal studies, literary theory, mathematics, medicine, music, pedagogical theory, philosophy, photography and film, poetry, politics, religion, sociology, the visual and plastic arts, and others. The bibliography also documents items in a range of languages other than English: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Slovanian, Spanish, and the Scandinavian languages. Access to the information contained in the bibliography is made easy with a comprehensive index providing guidance according to author, subject, language, and key words. Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994 is an essential reference text for anyone working in the area of contemporary culture studies.