scholarly journals Failed collaboration and queer love in Yeats’s The Cat and the Moon and Beckett’s Rough for Theatre I

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-244
Author(s):  
Alexandra Poulain
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Form ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Best Effort ◽  
Actual Production ◽  
Literary Collaboration ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Poetic Vision ◽  
The Grotesque

Beckett’s Rough for Theatre I, first written in French in the late 1950s, picks up the theme of Yeats’s The Cat and the Moon—itself based on earlier material, including Synge’s The Well of the Saints. Staging mutually dependent disabled bodies and charting the elaboration of joint poetic vision, both plays also paradoxically focus on the dramaturgical and poetic potential of collaborative failure. While Yeats insisted that his play should be read allegorically as a dramatisation of the journey towards Unity of Being, this paper attempts to take it at face value, alongside Beckett’s sequel, reading them both as dramas of (failed) collaboration between disabled, mutually complementary bodies. More specifically, it argues that despite Yeats’s best effort to allegorise the grotesque bodies on the stage into abstract principles of Body and Soul, something in his play refuses to be subsumed into allegory and resists the play’s drive towards unity. This resistant “something” has to do with the queer (in every sense) version of love which is being played out on the stage, and it is precisely this queer, sadomasochistic, unproductive love, and the jouissance it procures, uncomfortably, for two disabled characters, which becomes the central theme of Beckett’s play. Further, the paper suggests that this motif of queer love doubles as a paradigm for an alternative form of literary collaboration, one which is not geared towards the actual production of a finished marketable product such as a book or a play, but rather towards the shared creation and immediate enjoyment of stories invented and performed in a space removed from, yet marginal to, the sphere of modern capitalistic exchange.

Some Thoughts on Gogol's “Kolyaska”

PMLA ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 848-860
Author(s):  
John G. Garrard
Keyword(s):  
Central Theme ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
The Grotesque

AbstractAlthough singled out for special praise by such fellow practitioners of the craft as Dostoevsky and Chekhov, Gogol’s story “Kolyaska” has been ignored by the adherents of both major schools of Gogol criticism: those seeking to demonstrate that Gogol was primarily a social satirist and those who consider him a master of the grotesque. Yet an analysis of “Kolyaska” shows that it is in fact paradigmatic, presenting in quintessential form both Gogol’s central theme of man’s futile search for identity and his favorite narrative strategies of blurring the contours of the visible world by alogism and creating comic incongruity by a “worm’s-eye view” of reality. The point at which the thematic and narrative lines meet is best defined as irony, a concept that enables us to reconcile both satire and the grotesque, both the laughter and the tears so often said to be evoked by his works.

scholarly journals Cosmic Mysticism: Quest for the Absolute in the Works of Tagore and Sri Aurobindo

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 298
Author(s):  
Swati Samantaray
Keyword(s):  
Central Theme ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Sri Aurobindo ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Immediate Experience

Cosmic mysticism is an immediate experience of oneness with God by means of ecstatic and wordless contemplation. The Indian Renaissance poets Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo are spiritual humanists who believe that the entire creation is pervaded by the presence of God. Their exceptional minds have an instinctive urge to synthesize and transform, transmute and transcend  the aspects of reality. They regard humans as a replica of the Divine Spirit and hence they value man's  ideals and aspirations. Their ways of depicting this is very different, albeit their works bear an analogous thematic purpose, which is cosmic mysticism. This paper  delineates the perception of cosmic mysticism in the works of Tagore and Aurobindo. The central theme of their writings – the spiritualization of earthly life – rests on their beliefs that God exists in all of Nature and that spiritual intuition makes it possible for every individual to become conscious of their own divinity. The poets display the cosmic trinity of mind, body and soul in their works and are committed to achieving cosmic consciousness and social amelioration.Keywords: Mysticism,  Divine, spirituality, nature, love, philosophy, inspiration, humanism

Prose and drama

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kahn ◽  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Irina Reyfman ◽  
Stephanie Sandler
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Narrative Prose ◽  
The Grotesque

A central theme of narrative prose and dramatic theater remained the conflict between an individual and society, increasingly specified as the clash of a man or woman with ongoing historical destruction. Prose and drama, like poetry, tested the formation of new subjectivities in response to historical catastrophe. Alongside the manifestations of Socialist Realism and its derivatives, the century-long evolution of the utopian/dystopian is traced. Attention is paid to the aesthetics of the grotesque and to the poetics of skaz, to an emerging trend of existentialist narrative and the flourishing women’s prose. Also important is the quasi-fictional mode best described as “in-between prose.” The continuous exploration of identity through changing literary genres, including resurgent modernist forms, runs through the diverse case studies.

scholarly journals A Juggler on the Moon: How Sounds Think in Tom Stoppard's Darkside

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 181-197
Author(s):  
Neil Verma
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Radio Drama ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Radio Play

This essay explores Tom Stoppard’s 2013 radio playDarkside, which incorporates elements of Pink Floyd’s 1973 albumTheDark Side of the Moon, and dramatizes a series of thought experiments. I show how the combination of these three forms necessitates a rethinking of how sounds operate in radio drama, chart the play’s habits of diversion and evasion, and discuss how these tendencies are brought to bear on the central theme of climate change. At the heart of this essay is a proposal that the idea of the “sound of thought” embodied inDarksidemay prompt a new approach to the theory of radio, one that begins not with what sounds mean, but with how sounds “think”.

The motion of a lunar orbiter

1966 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 373
Author(s):  
Y. Kozai
Keyword(s):  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Artificial Satellite ◽  
Equations Of Motion ◽  
Triaxial Ellipsoid ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Secular Motion ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Close Satellite ◽  
The Mean

The motion of an artificial satellite around the Moon is much more complicated than that around the Earth, since the shape of the Moon is a triaxial ellipsoid and the effect of the Earth on the motion is very important even for a very close satellite.The differential equations of motion of the satellite are written in canonical form of three degrees of freedom with time depending Hamiltonian. By eliminating short-periodic terms depending on the mean longitude of the satellite and by assuming that the Earth is moving on the lunar equator, however, the equations are reduced to those of two degrees of freedom with an energy integral.Since the mean motion of the Earth around the Moon is more rapid than the secular motion of the argument of pericentre of the satellite by a factor of one order, the terms depending on the longitude of the Earth can be eliminated, and the degree of freedom is reduced to one.Then the motion can be discussed by drawing equi-energy curves in two-dimensional space. According to these figures satellites with high inclination have large possibilities of falling down to the lunar surface even if the initial eccentricities are very small.The principal properties of the motion are not changed even if plausible values ofJ3andJ4of the Moon are included.This paper has been published in Publ. astr. Soc.Japan15, 301, 1963.

Laboratory Simulation of Lunar Luminescence

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 441-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Geake ◽  
H. Lipson ◽  
M. D. Lumb
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology ◽  
Laboratory Simulation ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Physics Department ◽  
Luminescent Spectrum

Work has recently begun in the Physics Department of the Manchester College of Science and Technology on an attempt to simulate lunar luminescence in the laboratory. This programme is running parallel with that of our colleagues in the Manchester University Astronomy Department, who are making observations of the luminescent spectrum of the Moon itself. Our instruments are as yet only partly completed, but we will describe briefly what they are to consist of, in the hope that we may benefit from the comments of others in the same field, and arrange to co-ordinate our work with theirs.

Formation of Lunar Craters and Bright Rays as a Result of Meteorite Impacts

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 415-418
Author(s):  
K. P. Stanyukovich ◽  
V. A. Bronshten
Keyword(s):  
Explosive Charge ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Meteorite Impacts ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Lunar Craters ◽  
The Impact

The phenomena accompanying the impact of large meteorites on the surface of the Moon or of the Earth can be examined on the basis of the theory of explosive phenomena if we assume that, instead of an exploding meteorite moving inside the rock, we have an explosive charge (equivalent in energy), situated at a certain distance under the surface.

The Origin of the Moon

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 149-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. L. Ruskol
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Composition ◽  
Solar System ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Origin Of The Moon

The difference between average densities of the Moon and Earth was interpreted in the preceding report by Professor H. Urey as indicating a difference in their chemical composition. Therefore, Urey assumes the Moon's formation to have taken place far away from the Earth, under conditions differing substantially from the conditions of Earth's formation. In such a case, the Earth should have captured the Moon. As is admitted by Professor Urey himself, such a capture is a very improbable event. In addition, an assumption that the “lunar” dimensions were representative of protoplanetary bodies in the entire solar system encounters great difficulties.

The Origin of the Moon and its Relationship to the Origin of the Solar System

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold C. Urey
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Origin Of The Moon

During the last 10 years, the writer has presented evidence indicating that the Moon was captured by the Earth and that the large collisions with its surface occurred within a surprisingly short period of time. These observations have been a continuous preoccupation during the past years and some explanation that seemed physically possible and reasonably probable has been sought.

A Photographic Map of the Moon

1962 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 113-115
Author(s):  
D. W. G. Arthur ◽  
E. A. Whitaker
Keyword(s):  
Lunar Surface ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Map Projection

The cartography of the lunar surface can be split into two operations which can be carried on quite independently. The first, which is also the most laborious, is the interpretation of the lunar photographs into the symbolism of the map, with the addition of fine details from telescopic sketches. An example of this kind of work is contained in Johann Krieger'sMond Atlaswhich consists of photographic enlargements in which Krieger has sharpened up the detail to accord with his telescopic impressions. Krieger did not go on either to convert the photographic picture into the line symbolism of a map, or to place this picture on any definite map projection.

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