Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama. Martin Puchner

Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama



Download Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama



Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama Martin Puchner ebook pdf
Publisher:
Language: English
Page: 247
ISBN: 0801868556, 9780801877766

Review

In this superb examination of theatricality and its detractors, Martin Puchner takes a close look at the theories of Stéphane Mallarmé, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William Butler Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett... In order to circumvent theatricality, Puchner observes, these authors shared common strategies: the superimposition of stage directions, choral figures, narratives, and commentators on the action, and characters who observe their own actions—all designed to disrupt mimesis, illusion, and theatrical virtuosity... [An] important study.

(David Krasner Theatre Journal 2004)

A breathtaking tour de force through different languages, genres, and millennia from Plato to the Wooster Group, Stage Fright opens up a theoretical path for the reintegration of theater studies into the German studies discourse... Puchner argues persuasively that theater plays a constitutive role in modernism and proposes theatricality as the divisive aesthetical moment in the opposition between modernism and the avant-garde... Puchner's book is original and exciting even in its asides and footnotes... an intellectual treat and a must-read for any scholar dealing with twentieth-century literature and culture.

(Veronika Fuechtner Germanic Review 2012)

After this study, a lot of polemic energy spent in debate between pro-theatricalists and anti-theatricalists, between adherents of modernism and those of the avant-garde, can be spared. The fault lines between solipsistic and elitist modernism on the one side, and a collaborative and political avant-garde on the other, must be drawn anew. As Puchner brilliantly demonstrates, the radical difference must be thought, first and foremost, along the parameters of anti-theatrical modernism versus the theatrical avant-garde... By doing justice to the minute details of... the dramas and theories of Mallarmé, Joyce, Stein, Yeats, Brecht and Beckett, Puchner makes a compelling case for the central thesis of the book. Moreover, Puchner... provides a new vocabulary to analyze modernism's 'hate affair' with the theater.

(Klaus Mladek Modernism/modernity )

Puchner's vigorous discussion... provides a new way to rethink drama's relationship both with the actual theatre and with its closeted literary counterparts... [and] offers a provocative remapping of the twentieth century's theatrical (and anti-theatrical) energies.

(Stanton B. Garner, Jr. Modern Drama )

A provocative reassessment of modernism and the post-Wagnerian theater. Stage Fright is well written, clearly argued, and nicely organized, with a diction that is authoritative without being stuffy... Those interested in the history of the theater will find in Puchner's emphasis on the value and devaluing of theatricality a means of re-reading a century. Scholars of modernism may find this value and its articulation in Stage Fright equally useful for approaching other texts and genres.

(Geoffrey Baker Comparative Literature )

Puchner's positioning of the Epic Theater in a larger, exhaustively and well-theorized context of modernist attempts to reconfigure the actor and create legible gestures by diegetic means certainly makes his book a major contribution to Brecht scholarship.

(Markus Wessendorf Brecht Yearbook )

This book—with its thoughtful examination of difficult questions—is exceptionally smart and will usefully recalibrate discussions of modernism and modernist theatre.

(Theatre Research International )

A capital addition to the history of theater as well as an innovative theoretical approach rooted in literary history.

(Anne V. Cirella-Urrutia The Comparatist )

This book gives the reader not only a brilliant study of modernist theater but also a superb demonstration of the theoretical productiveness of taking apparently opposed terms and considering them as parameters of a field of forces rather than as mutually exclusive alternatives of which only one can be chosen.

(Barbara Johnson, Harvard University, author of The Critical Difference and A World of Difference )

Puchner is razor-sharp theoretically. His argument brilliantly illuminates the relationship between and among the performance theorists of the historic avant-garde and a startling array of canonical authors whose careers in drama and especially closet drama proceed from a phobic distrust and even loathing of the theater. Stage Fright is the most exciting book in the field of modern drama that I have read in ten years.

(Joseph Roach, Yale University )

Philosophy as well as arts and drama collections will find this thought-provoking.

(James A. Cox Midwest Book Review )

From the Back Cover

Grounded equally in discussions of theater history, literary genre, and theory, Martin Puchner's Stage Fright explores the conflict between avant-garde theater and modernism.

"In this superb examination of theatricality and its detractors, Martin Puchner takes a close look at the theories of Stéphane Mallarmé, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William Butler Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett... [An] important study."— Theatre Journal

"A breathtaking tour de force through different languages, genres, and millennia from Plato to the Wooster Group, Stage Fright opens up a theoretical path for the reintegration of theater studies into the German studies discourse... An intellectual treat and a must-read for any scholar dealing with twentieth-century literature and culture."— Germanic Review

"After this study, a lot of polemic energy spent in debate between pro-theatricalists and anti-theatricalists, between adherents of modernism and those of the avant-garde, can be spared... As Puchner brilliantly demonstrates, the radical difference must be thought, first and foremost, along the parameters of anti-theatrical modernism versus the theatrical avant-garde."— Modernism/modernity

"A provocative reassessment of modernism and the post-Wagnerian theater. Stage Fright is well written, clearly argued, and nicely organized, with a diction that is authoritative without being stuffy."— Comparative Literature



MORE EBOOKS:
Essential Surgery: Problems, Diagnosis and Management (MRCS Study Guides) 4th ed pdf download
California's Frontier Naturalists ebook download
Download Awesome 3d Game Development: No Programming Required pdf
Download ebook: Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama







Tags: Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama ebook pdf djvu epub
Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama download pdf epub djvu
Download Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama free ebook pdf
Read Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama online book
Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama cheap ebook for kindle and nook
Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama download book
Martin Puchner ebooks
Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama download pdf rapidshare mediafire fileserve 4shared torrent