‘Lion Griefs’: the Wild Animal Act as Theatre

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Wild Animal ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
King's College ◽  
Animal Training ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern British Literature ◽  
Primary Materials

This essay is concerned with the history of wild animal training between the early nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries, specifically with circus acts involving ‘big cats’. The author, John Stokes, is sympathetic to the view that such performances are inhumane, degrading to animal and human alike, but rather than simply rehearsing familiar attitudes, he subjects the ‘big cat’ act to a performance analysis based on established criteria, in the belief that, if performance theory is to have the widespread application that its advocates claim, then it should be able to elucidate many different kinds of theatrical event. His primary materials are the myriad biographies and autobiographies of wild animal trainers that were produced during the heyday of their art, and which he finds to be frequently characterized by an unexpected thoughtfulness and breadth of experience, besides being highly informative about performance aesthetics. John Stokes is Professor of Modern British Literature in the Department of English, King's College London. He is a regular theatre reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and co-author, together with Michael R. Booth and Susan Bassnett, of Bernhardt, Terry, Duse: the Actress in Her Time (Cambridge, 1988) and Three Tragic Actresses (Cambridge, 1996).

Prodigals and Profligates; or, a Short History of Modern British Drama

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-38
Author(s):  
John Stokes
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
Short History ◽  
Prodigal Son ◽  
King's College ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
British Drama ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern British Literature

In 1996 John Stokes was appointed to the first endowed Chair in Modern British Literature at King's College, London, where English has been taught since the 1830s. In this version of his inaugural lecture, delivered on 6 November 1997, he traces the transformations undergone by the figure of the prodigal son in the drama of the last hundred years and argues for recognition of the part played by actors in determining the course of theatrical history.

scholarly journals WILLIAM GOLDING AS A MAN AND CREATOR IN ENGLISH WRITERS’ ESSAYS

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 918-923
Author(s):  
Yu.A. Shanina
Keyword(s):  
British Literature ◽  
English Literature ◽  
British Novel ◽  
William Golding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Modern British Literature ◽  
New Tradition ◽  
Moral Questions

This research is devoted to the interpretation of William Golding’s works by his younger contemporaries. The solution of this purpose allows to determine the significance of Golding’s novels in modern British literature and culture. The subject of our research is several essays such as David Lodge’s “William Golding” (1964), Ian McEwan’s “Schoolboys” (1986), John Fowles’s “Golding and 'Golding” (1986), Craig Raine’s “Belly without Blemish: Golding’s sources” (1986), Nigel Williams’s “William Golding: A frighteningly honest writer” (2012). Some of them present the memoirs, the others contain the literary critique. The analysis shows that Golding’s novels are seeing as extraordinary, original creations, as the beginning of a new tradition in the consideration of childhood and moral questions in the English literature. They mark the next stage in the history of the British novel, which is characterized by new plots, characters and motives.

Histories

2020 ◽  
pp. 142-180
Author(s):  
Michael Spitzer
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
William James ◽  
Performance Theory ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Violin Sonata ◽  
Norbert Elias ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Musical Emotion ◽  
Practice Period

This chapter proposes that the history of musical emotion pivots on a core period of “affective realism,” coterminous with the common practice period and the writings of Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Smith, Darwin, and William James. In this period of “affective realism,” emotion is objectified, individuated, mimetic of human behavior, and subjective. Prior to 1600, emotion, by contrast, is fluid, relational, transcendent, divine, and the province of theology. The main body of the chapter reviews the seminal work of three historians of emotions: Norbert Elias, Barbara Rosenwein, and William Reddy, together with their concepts of “civilizing,” “emotional community,” and “emotives.” The chapter concludes with a critique of performance theory, focusing on a performance analysis of a Bach violin sonata.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Almeida's “History of Ethiopia”: Recovery of the Preliminary Matter

1923 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-804
Author(s):  
E. Denison Ross
Keyword(s):  
Title Page ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
King's College ◽  
Original Title ◽  
History Of ◽  
Outer Cover

Since the appearance of the last number of this Bulletin I have had the good fortune to find the outer cover of the King's College manuscript of Almeida's History of Ethiopia, which had hitherto been missing. The discovery is important, for attached to this cover there was not only the original title page, but also the “Preliminary Matter” referred to by Marsden in his Catalogue, occupying in all eleven folios. The contents are as follows:—

The Booker Prize and Post-Imperial British Literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Holmes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
British Literature ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Commonwealth Of Nations ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
British Colonies

In the particular and peculiar case of the Booker Prize, regarded as the most prestigious literary award in the United Kingdom (as measured by economic value to the author and publisher, and total audience for the awards announcement), the cultural and economic valences of literary prizes collide with the imperial history of Britain, and its after-empire relationships to its former colonies. From its beginnings, the Booker prize has never been simply a British prize for writers in the United Kingdom. The Booker’s reach into the Commonwealth of Nations, a loose cultural and economic alliance of the United Kingdom and former British colonies, challenges the very constitution of the category of post-imperial British literature. With a history of winners from India, South Africa, New Zealand, and Nigeria, among many other former British colonies, the Booker presents itself as a value arbitrating mechanism for a majority of the English-speaking world. Indeed, the Booker has maintained a reputation for bringing writers from postcolonial nations to the attention of a British audience increasingly hungry for a global, cosmopolitan literature, especially one easily available via the lingua franca of English. Whether and how the prize winners avoid the twin colonial pitfalls of ownership by and debt to an English patron is the subject of a great deal of criticism on the Booker, and to understand the prize as a gatekeeper and tastemaker for the loose, baggy canon of British or even global Anglophone literature, there must be a reckoning with the history of the prize, its multiplication into several prizes under one umbrella category, and the form and substance of the novels that have taken the prize since 1969.

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