"Theater's materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by cos...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Bibliographische Detailangaben

1. Verfasser:	Balkin, Sarah 1982- (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Buch
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press August 2019
Schlagworte:	Geschichte 1850-1980 Drama Vampir Theater Geist > Motiv Europa Drama / 19th century / History and criticism Characters and characteristics in literature Human body in literature 1800-1899 Criticism, interpretation, etc
Zusammenfassung:	"Theater's materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by costumes, settings, props, and spoken dialogue. Examining work by Ibsen, Wilde, Strindberg, Genet, Kopit, and Beckett, the book takes up the apparent deadness of characters whose selves are made of other people, whose thoughts become exteriorized communication technologies, and whose bodies merge with walls and furniture. The ghostly, vampiric, and telepathic qualities of these characters, Sarah Balkin argues, mark a new relationship between the material and the imaginary in modern theater. By considering characters whose bodies respond to language, whose attempts to realize their individuality collapse into inanimacy, and who sometimes don't appear at all, the book posits a new genealogy of modernist drama that emphasizes its continuities with nineteenth-century melodrama and realism"--
Beschreibung:	viii, 190 Seiten Illustrationen 24 cm
ISBN:	9780472131488