THE STRUGGLE OF WOMEN EXISTENCE IN “ISN’T IT ROMANTIC” NOVEL BY WENDY WESSERSTEIN

This study aimed to reveal the struggle of women to gain existence in the novel as a representation of social phenomena. The data source of this research was Isn't It Romantic drama by Wendy Wesserstein. This drama is about women who want to achieve their dreams without the participation of their parents. They want to live without any interference from their parents. To reveal the struggle for existence, the researcher uses the existentialism approach by Simone Beauvoir. Existentialists fight for the nature of human existence, especially for women who have been subordinated to the patriarchal system. The method used in this research is Descriptive qualitative method. The close reading data collection method is effective in tracing data relevant to research variables. The analysis method is carried out critically by using an existentialism approach. The researcher got three main analyses toward the novel, they are: independence over women, authority in making decisions, and lastly, the same existence as a human being.

Repurposing Romantic Drama in Late-Nineteenth-Century Egypt: Najīb al-Ḥaddād’s Arabizations of Victor Hugo

At the end of the nineteenth century, Najīb al-Ḥaddād adapted two dramas by Victor Hugo for The Egyptian Patriotic Troupe. Al-Ḥaddād rewrote Hugo’s Hernani as Ḥamdān, transferring the story from the Spanish court of 1519 to Andalucía under ‘Abd al-Raḥmān II. Les Burgraves became Tha’rāt al-‘arab (Revenge of the Arabs), and transformed from a play about Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire into a play about a pre-Islamic Lakhmid king’s struggle to restore unified Arab rule in the Arabian peninsula. I argue that Al-Ḥaddād’s adaptations anachronistically placed modern ideas in the Arab past—characterizing shūrā as the election of leaders, using sha‘b to mean a sovereign people, and calling for Arab cultural unity and revival. Al-Ḥaddād’s adaptations transformed the nationalism of Hugo’s drama into calls for Arab solidarity. In producing these plays, The Egyptian Patriotic Troupe embodied an Arab past overlaid with modern communal identities.

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.

«Вечный муж» и традиция мениппеи

The article examines the motif structure of the main characters in Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband against the background of menippea and its various genres. The parodic transformations of the images and motifs of Dostoevsky's previous texts, especially the novel The Idiot, modify the traditional love triangle of the short story. The relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist reflects the ambivalence of the archetypal scheme “king vs jester” and the way it appears in Hugo’s romantic drama Le Roi s’amuse and Verdi’s opera Rigoletto. The plot of revenge and vindication of trampled dignity dates back to the genre of medieval mock mystery (R. Jakobson) and its narrative of the Easter resurrection, posing the problem of Christianity and its values in the Russian society of the time.

ROME AND CARTHAGE BY A.V. TIMOFEEV: ON THE PROBLEM OF THE GENESIS OF “HISTORICAL FANTASY” AS A GENRE VARIETY OF RUSSIAN ROMANTIC DRAMA OF THE 19TH CENTURY

The paper explores the genre of scarcely studied play by Russian minor writer Alexei V. Timofeev (1812-1883) Rome and Carthage (1837). Timofeev’s contemporary literary critic Osip Senkovskii treated like poet’s failure his use of romantic techniques in the play on ancient plot. Taking into account this opinion the paper analyzes the paratextual elements in the play, the way of describing characters, the division of the play into acts, the connection of the plot events with historical facts. The paper argues that the play approaches the kind of romantic drama, which the author suggests to call “historical fantasy” Its main feature is the coexisting in the plot mythology and religious tradition, on the one hand, and historical events, on the other, the heroes of historical chronicles and the heroes of folk legends, belief in miracles and rationalism. The goal of historical fantasy is to produce a generalized image of the time, to convey the spirit of the epoch while the dramatic action takes a secondary place. Samples of the genre were given in the works of Alexander A. Shakhovskoi, Alexander I. Gertsen, Apollon N. Maikov. Timofeev’s play was just in the way to this kind of drama.

TRAGEDY IN L. TIECK’S DRAMA. SOME ASPECTS

The article considers the genre of tragedy in the works of L. Tieck, one of the key figures of German Romanticism. It is known that the tragedy genre among the German romantics is represented mainly by two varieties: the “tragedy of fate” (Schicksalsdrama) and the drama on a religious-historical theme (in literature most often referred to as Universaldrama, “universal drama”). L. Tieck stands at the origins of both genres, while the tragedy “The Life and Death of Saint Genoveva” (1801), to which other religious and historical dramas of German romanticism go back, turned out to be especially influential. Having created examples of those two genres, Tieck rethinks tragic structures, relativizing them in different ways – firstly, by transforming the tragic genre itself, and, secondly, by including tragic elements into the complex genre constructs, mainly into fairy-tale dramas. That rethinking, however, takes place mostly in the mainstream of the parody typical of Tieck’s work – whether it is a parody of the “main” tragedy with a comedy counterpart or the inclusion of parodies of the tragedy, including his own tragedies, in comedy texts. At the same time, however, Tieck’s last dramatic work, “Fortunat”, which has much in common with his fairy-tale dramas and, like them, is a complex genre construct, ends in tragedy in its purest form, the triumph of the tragic substance. In our opinion that testifies to the impossibility of complete relativization of tragedy and to the crisis of romantic drama

Dramat i romantyczne „Ja": Studium podmiotowości w dramaturgii polskiej doby romantyzmu

THE DRAMA AND ROMANTIC “I”. A STUDY OF SUBJECTIVITY IN THE POLISH DRAMATURGY OF THE ROMANTIC EPOCH The book presents studies concerning subjectivity in the Polish dramaturgy of the romantic and postromantic epochs. Its topic comprises an issue in research on the romantic drama which has not been analysed yet, although this issue is necessary for adequate characteristics of the romantic drama. The context of detailed analyses is formed by the views of philosophers and art theoreticians as well as dramaturgists, indicating that an idea of the subject constituted, beginning from the turn of 19th century, an important and deeply strengthened element of anthropological and aesthetical discourse, which is confirmed by Uwagi wstępne [Introductory Remarks]. In this context, subjectivity has been treated in the thesis as an immanent trait of the drama, but such perception is connected with confidence that the poetics and aesthetics of the drama constitute at the same time an artistic version of anthropology of the creative individual and philosophy of the subject. The book aims at tracing different manifestations of the subject presence in the romantic drama, distinct not only for particular authors but also for historically and aesthetically determined phases of the Romanticism. The centre of considerations is constituted by “I” analysed as a source of the drama creation (author’s subject) and by “I” as an object of the performance both in the subject of a hero and the holistic structure of a drama (“I” as a compositional principle of the dramatic work, performance “I” in the dramatic form, drama “I”).

Romantic Drama

Among all modes of literary expression, drama was the most popular, most lucrative, and most influential of the era. S. T. Coleridge, Joanna Baillie, Lord Byron, Mary Mitford were among the poets whose plays were successfully performed, and Coleridge joined Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt as critics of the drama. To shield church and state, censorship was exercised under the Licensing Act (1737). This Act granted to the licensed Theatres Royal the exclusive right to perform traditional comedy and tragedy. Originally directed to perform only musical entertainment and pantomime, the unlicensed theatres gradually introduced more spoken dialogue and relied on melodrama to attract audiences.

L’œuvre de Pixerécourt sous la Restauration: entre valeurs de l’ancien régime et source d’inspiration pour l’école romantique

The aim of the article is to show the evolution of classical melodrama, the complexity of the genre and the influence of Pixerécourt’s melodrama on Victor Hugo’s romantic drama which mani-fests itself in contradictory and hyperbolic means. Indeed, Victor Hugo faces the same obstacle as the author of melodrama: how to represent the duality of the universe without falling into a simplify-ing and gnomic vision? While Victor Hugo opts for the constant use of antithesis, Pixerécourt seeks to adapt his heroes to the new reality under the Restoration: by temporarily reversing the roles, he makes women, at least momentarily, the pillar of social life.

The “Erotic” Tractor in the Soviet Cinema

Between the 1930s and the 1960s, much emphasis was put in the Soviet Union on the technological development of the country. One of the latest wonders of technology was the tractor, which harvested crops efficiently and rapidly. This article is concerned with the Soviet cinematic representation of work with tractors as the most erotic characteristic of a man. A man attractive to women in Soviet cinema is not handsome but rather is someone proficient in operating a tractor. On the other hand, a man who does not know how to operate a tractor is represented as impotent and is ridiculed by female characters. Several romantic films were produced in which the relationship between the protagonists developed against a background of the use of a tractor. These films became iconic and classic: everyone saw them many times and knew their scripts by heart. Most of the films depict a young Soviet man and his path to the heart of his girlfriend, and some show the maturation of the young character and his transformation into a real man. These goals are achieved through his work as a tractor driver. Examples of this are films like The Rich Bride (romantic comedy, 1937), Tractor Drivers (romantic drama, 1939), Cossacks of the Kuban (romantic comedy, 1949), It Happened in Penkovo (romantic drama, 1957), and Knight’s Move (comedy, 1962). In all these films, work with tractors is represented as an integral part of the “machismo” of the Soviet man.