“Take (Meta)physic, pomp”: King Lear and (Dis)oriented Ontology

This essay uses Object-Oriented Ontology, a posthumanist theoretical model, to explore how King Lear’s use of and relation to objects can provide insight into his characterization. This essay provides a model for scrutinizing the role of objects—whether animate or inanimate—in performances of early modern drama; furthermore, it argues that King Lear’s use of objects reveals a consistent refusal to understand others, which upsets a redemptive arc in the play. To that end, the article proposes an ethical model—demonstrated by Kent—that responds to the play’s otherwise desolate worldview.

Henry Moore’s Narayana and Bhataryan: theatre of sacrifice

Henry Moore’s unpublished play Narayana and Bhataryan (c. 1919) was first performed in 1920 at Castleford Secondary School. Moore wrote, performed in and designed the programme for this play. Despite timely theatrical returns to Moore’s only surviving literary creation, this play has not yet been the subject of in-depth critical study. Using archival research, this article engages with the play’s early indication of Moore’s sculptural tendencies. It traces the play’s parallels with another play produced in the early twentieth century: Rabindranath Tagore’s Sacrifice. Doing so highlights the cross-cultural echoes that exist in Narayana and Bhataryan, its relationship to early twentieth-century global modernist movements, the thematic presence of posture, architecture, ritual and trauma, and the emergence of Moore’s lifelong concerns with the mother and child and the human body. This article places Moore’s play in critical relationship to his sculpture and introduces his lone contribution to the fabric of modern drama as having cross-cultural relevance in the 1980s when an exhibition of his work toured India.

Discussion on Raymond Williams’ Methodology of Drama Criticism

Raymond Williams is one of the representative figures of British cultural Marxism and British cultural research. His cultural research, especially mass culture research, focuses on literary criticism. Among them, drama criticism is one of Williams’ most important forms of cultural criticism methodology. Williams’ drama criticism is based on drama history criticism. Through the historical analysis of drama content and form as well as the synchronic analysis of modern drama in different historical periods, including the ongoing drama history, Williams proposed the notion of “structures of feeling.” The emergence of this concept opened up the social critical dimension of Williams’ drama criticism. Drama criticism has become a window for examining, analyzing, and grasping the current social emotional structure or social culture. Furthermore, by implanting tragic plots in the drama, a potential practical strategy of social and cultural revolution can be realized.

NATIONAL IDENTITY AND FEATURES OF ITS REFLECTION IN THE MODERN DRAMA OF THE VOLGA REGION

Статья посвящена вопросу национальной специфики литератур народов Поволжья, соотношению национального и регионального в понимании идентичности как таковой. В работе выявляются общие моменты в отражении национальной идентичности, этнических и общечеловеческих ценностей в современной драматургии Поволжья. В качестве объекта исследования выбраны произведения современных чувашских и татарских драматургов, в которых наиболее ярко выражена национальная проблема. Путем сравнительного анализа в статье рассмотрены формы проявления национальной идентичности в произведениях, такие как национальные мифы, образы, идеалы, архетипы, обращение к далекому прошлому народа, к типичным чертам национального характера. Важным идеологическим ресурсом национальной идентичности на современном этапе выступило историческое прошлое чувашского и татарского народов. В судьбе главных исторических личностей отразилась трагическая судьба булгарского народа. В чувашской драме «Часы с кукушкой» (2016) М. Карягиной и татарской монодраме «Микулай» (2019) М. Гилязова проблема идентичности рассматривается в отношении героев к национальным и общечеловеческим ценностям, таким как родная земля, дом, семья, память, нравственность, долг, ответственность и др. The article is devoted to national specifics of the literatures of the peoples of the Volga region, the correlation of national and regional to the understanding of identity as such. The paper reveals common points in the reflection of national identity, ethnic and universal values in the drama of the Volga region. The works of modern Chuvash and Tatar playwrights, in which the national problem is most clearly expressed, are chosen as the object of research. By means of comparative analysis, the article considers the forms of national identity in the works, such as national myths, images, ideals, archetypes, reference to the distant past of the people, to the typical features of the national character. An important ideological resource of national identity was the historical past of the Chuvash and Tatar peoples. The fate of the main historical figures reflected the tragic fate of the Bulgarian people. In the Chuvash drama “The Cuckoo Clock” (2016) by M. Karyagina and the Tatar monodrama “Mikulai” (2019) by M. Gilyazov, the problem of identity is considered in the relation of their characters to national and universal values, such as their native land, home, family, memory, morality, duty, responsibility, etc.

Antônio José, uma tragédia fora de hora? / Antônio José, a tragedy out of time?

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é, primeiro, mostrar que a tradicional avaliação da tragédia Antônio José (i. e., que ela peca pelo gênero conservador e pela forma versificada), exaustivamente repetida por inúmeros críticos e historiadores da literatura brasileira ao longo do século XX, não se confirma na prática, pois tragédias continuam existindo ao lado de dramas e melodramas até a segunda metade do século XIX nos dois lados do Atlântico, assim como composições em verso ao lado de outras em prosa. Em seguida, argumenta-se que Antônio José possui, apesar de se proclamar tragédia, inúmeras características ligadas à cena moderna e se insere perfeitamente no projeto romântico-eclético difundido por Gonçalves de Magalhães e outros entusiastas do nosso primeiro romantismo.Palavras-chave: romantismo; ecletismo; drama romântico; história literária.Abstract: The aim of this article is, firstly, to show that the traditional evaluation of the tragedy Antônio José (i.e., that it sins by its conservative genre and versified form), exhaustively repeated by countless critics and historians of Brazilian literature throughout the 20th century, is not confirmed in practice, because tragedies continue to exist alongside dramas and melodramas until the second half of the 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as verse compositions alongside others in prose. Then, it is argued that Antônio José possesses, despite proclaiming itself a tragedy, numerous characteristics linked to the modern drama and fits perfectly into the romantic-eclectic project spread by Gonçalves de Magalhães and other enthusiasts of our first romanticism.Keywords: romanticism; eclectism; romantic drama; literary history.

Matthew Franks. Subscription Theater: Democracy and Drama in Britain and Ireland, 1880–1939

Matthew Franks’s Subscription Theater: Democracy and Drama in Britain and Ireland, 1880–1939 argues that subscription reflected and nurtured the democratic impulses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both challenged and contributed to the commercial theatre, and established the canon of modern drama.

Elements of Dramatic Symbolism in the Poetics of Miodrag Žalica

In the literary and theatrical critique of his time (second half of the 20th century), Miodrag Žalica was recognized as a representative of symbolist poetics in Bosnian-Herzegovinian drama. The features of Žalica’s dramatic symbolism have, however, rarely been observed through analyzing the technique of his dramatic works in concreto. The Piece Mirišu li jorgovani u Njujorku, written in 1988, certainly represents the culmination of Žalica’s poetics, and is, in that sense, suitable for an analysis of the symbolic network as a specific trademark of his authorship with regards to the poetics of symbolism in European modern drama at the turn of the 19th to 20th century.