Teoría del teatro, nivel avanzado

- Aquí unas notas sobre las aproximaciones críticas al concepto de género literario, de Platón en adelante.



- Del curso sobre teatro de Missouri, lección 9: The Play (y la Poética de Aristóteles)





Aristotle's Poetics (BBC In Our Time, audio): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xw210

 


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 Más sobre la sociología dramatística de Goffman:

-  Erving Goffman: The Dramaturgical Approach. Como pequeña introducción a la lectura de Goffman. http://youtu.be/VpTSG6YtaeY






Otro pequeño comentario sobre Goffman: El mundo social comopresentación y (re)presentación.



NIVEL AVANZADO: una ponencia sobre teoría social dramatúrgica:  La evolución del dividuo social y de los espacios públicos





Mencioné en clase el concepto de intermedialidad, y de "remediation". Aquí puede leerse algo más sobre esta noción, y cómo afecta a la experiencia personal: "El yo remediado".

Hablando de la intermedialidad, podemos poner el ejemplo de los audio/video/libros, como en el canal de CC Prose. Aquí por ejemplo The Old Curiosity Shop, de Dickens. Observad la teatralización del diálogo al ser leído por el narrador.

Lo mismo hacemos en el teatro de la vida cotidiana, al relatar una conversación que hemos tenido con alguien.  Este es un tema marginal, pero a quien le interese siempre puede leer algo sobre lanarración conversacional y sus dimensiones teatrales.

 

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NIVEL AVANZADO:

Un clásico oriental sobre teoría teatral, la "Poética" del teatro indio:

Bharat Muni (Attr.). Natya Shastra. Ancient Sanskrit treatise on drama. (c. 200 BC-200 AD).
_____. Natya Shastra. English trans. by Manomohan Ghosh. 1951. Internet Archive.
    http://archive.org/details/NatyaShastra
    2013

Una introducción a esta obra:

"Natya Shastra." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.*
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natyashastra



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 TEORÍA DEL TEATRO - NIVEL AVANZADO:

Una conferencia de Andrés Amorós sobre "El estudio del teatro" (en audio, 1985)—en relación al teatro español.
http://www.march.es/conferencias/anteriores/voz.aspx?p1=21631&l=1

- Un vídeo-debate sobre la actuación teatral y las neuronas espejo—una perspectiva neurocognitiva sobre la actividad del actor, tanto el actor teatral como los actores que somos en "el teatro social de la realidad". ACTING AND MIRROR NEURONS

- The evolutionary origins of mimesis in human sociality—a lecture on human cognition and language by Jordan Zlatev: http://savoirs.ens.fr/expose.php?id=939

- Sobre el origen de la tragedia, el rito y el chivo expiatorio, y el desplazamiento simbólico de la violencia, pueden seguirse las teorías de René Girard. Aquí (en francés) puede verse una introducción: Le rôle de la violence dans la culture humaine.


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Algunos materiales más, a nivel avanzado, sobre dramatismo cotidiano y ritual— desde Hegel hasta Sennett.





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Tenéis como una de las principales lecturas del Tema 1 (Introducción) unos capítulos de Goffman, sobre su teoría dramatística de la vida cotidiana en The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Dos notas adicionales:

- Un pequeño comentario de unos seguidores suyos sobre The Dramaturgic Analogy.


- Y una nota introductoria al libro de Goffman, Actuaciones (sobre el capítulo 1).








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Hablábamos en clase sobre teoría de marcos y teoría social dramatística. Un par de títulos:

Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday, 1966. Doubleday-Anchor, 1967.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis. Cambridge (MA): Harvard UP, 1974.

Los roles sociales como máscaras teatrales según Berger y Luckmann: Aprendiendo a esconderse.

Más adelante os pondré cosas sobre teoría de los marcos.

Frame Theory

Frame theory has many antecedents in literature and critical thought, but it was explicitly developed by Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman in the second half of the 20th century. It is very useful to account for any kind of phenomena in semiotics and in social life, but it is especially relevant to the analysis of literature and of performance.

According to frame theory, we structure reality in frames—that is, in groups of signs that "go together", big composite structures of signs which have a clear border, a frame, separating them from other sign structures. Frames are useful therefore to organize signs, to allow our mind to process a number of signs as having something in common, and to isolate chunks of reality from one another. As such, frames also serve to organize the structure of reality, and to make it manageable: we can easily move frames around, transform them, open and close them. We can recycle one frame in one context and apply it to another.

Frames organize social life and activities. For instance, in engaging in a coordinated activity, we open up a frame, and we behave accordingly: we focus our attention on the elements of the frame, and temporarily we disattend things that fall outside the frame.

An example: a class is a frame. It is a shared activity with delimited borderlines, in time and space. It has rules and conventions of its own, we assume specific roles when we are in class.  Notice that architecture also helps: a classroom helps to isolate the frame of the class, it gives it architectural coherence so to speak, and prevents interruptions from other coordinated activities (other classes, people engaging in social conversation, etc.). A class is a piece of socially structured reality, a conventional reality if you want, which we attend more or less to while we are engaged in it. Many other examples from work may come to mind: a meal in a restaurant, a social encounter with a friend in the street, the interaction between the shop assistant and the customers in a shop, etc. Frames are a handy way to understand and organize how social activities are carried out and coordinated.

Now, literature and drama are one such social activity. Even if we speak of solitary reading, the reader is interacting with a text. Reading requires disattending in part the physical world around you and opening up a frame in the middle of it—the frame we may identify with the work. A dream is of course a frame in our reality, and perhaps our oldest experience of virtual reality. A literary work is partly like a dream in this sense: a technology of virtual reality, through the use of language, texts, and frames of discourse. A literary work, a poem, a narrative, is a frame which opens in our reality and allows the presence, or the embedding, of a different reality while we read the work. Reality is suspended for the time being, and we are transported to Middlemarch, or to Robinson Crusoe's island, or to ancient Rome. We attend the represented speech of virtual characters, and we reconstruct the virtual world of the book thanks to our imagination, the speech of the characters, and the narrative discourse of the authorial voice.

The occasion for the literary frame may be solitary reading, or some kind of communal interaction: for instance, recitation by a poet or a storyteller. In this case the frame opens up within a social encounter, an event. Something similar happens in the case of drama: the oral performance of literature is already half dramatic. A narrative opens up a space of imagined reality, different from the here-and-now, but this imagined reality may become much more immersive if it becomes multimedia—I am not speaking of videogames here, but of the first multimedia experience in virtual reality—drama.

Erving Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) is the most elaborate discussion of frame theory in all aspects of social life, including drama. Goffman often discusses drama, which is an important analogy of social life in his theory, but we shall not go further into his analysis in that book. It is a book which must be read by those who want a deeper insight into the nature of reality, but it would require a course in itself. We shall examine, though, his dramatistic theory of social behaviour as expounded in an earlier book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

There are several important elements to take into account in frame analysis:

1) the establishing of frames: the kind of framing which is established to separate one frame from another, the "material" used to delimit the border of the frame, and the ways in which framing is sustained.

2) The formal structuring of frames relative to each other: i. e. whether they coexist on different planes, whether one is contained by another, whether they are sequential….

3) The managing of frames—how initial assumptions about framing change along with the experience of the frames. For instance, how a piece of experience which seemed to be lacking a frame is shown to be contained by a frame which appears retrospectively, retroactively "reframing" the whole.

4) The transformations of frames: how frames may be "keyed" to use Goffman's vocabulary. For instance, in drama, a performance may be a "serious" performance or a rehearsal. Keyings are a way to organize a new aspect of experience by transforming or reusing an existing frame.

5) Frame-breaking.  It is essential to establish and separate frames, and it is also essential to know when and how to break them. Depending on the kind of activity and of frame there may be many ways of breaking frame—but let us use as an instance the most obvious one, the image stepping outside of the picture and becoming real, crossing the frame which seemed to contain it.

6) Related to frame-breaking, but really a different issue: interferences between frames. For instance, the way a framed  section of experience is altered in subtle ways by the very fact that it is framed: the image which adapts itself to its frame, in painting or photography—or the dialogue in drama which is not "natural" because the characters are not really speaking only to one another, they are also speaking for the benefit of an audience whose presence they ignore.

Goffman: La realidad como expectativa autocumplida

—oOo—

GENRE

 From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:

GENRE. The term "genre"is often used interchangeably with "type," "kind," and "form." Western theory on the subject of whether works of literature can be classified into distinct kinds appears at the beginning of literary study and has sustained active controversies in every stage of literary history. Alternately extolled and condemned, praised for its potential for order and ingnored as, finally, irrelevant, the concept takes its tone, in every age, from the particular theory that surrounds it. Theorists approached it prescriptively until about the end of the 18th century, descriptively thereafter; and it retains its viability (if not always its honor) through the plethora of modern comments about the nature of possibilities of literature. But built into its ways of working are difficulties that have ultimately to do with a version of the hermeneutic circle: how can we choose specific works to draw a definition of, say, epic (q.v.) unless we already know what an epic is? Though answered in various ways, the question continues to insinuate itself.

Classical poetics (q.v.) had no systematic theory about the concept of genre. What thinking there is at the beginning of western poetics originates from a distinction made by Plato between two possible modes of reproducing an object or person: (1) by description (i.e. by portraying it by means of words) or (2) by mimicry or impersonation (i.e. by imitating it). Since poetry according to the mimetic theory (see IMITATION; REPRESENTATION AND MIMESIS; POETRY, THEORIES OF) was conceived as such a reproduction of external objects, these two modes became the main division of poetry: dramatic poetry (q.v.) or the theatre was direct imitation or miming of persons, and narrative poetry (q.v.) or the epic was the portrayal of descriptions of human actions.

But since this simple division obviously left out too much, a third division was inserted between the two others (Republic 3.392-94): the so-called mixed mode, in which narrative alternates with dialogue (q.v.), as is usually the case in epic poetry (which is rarely pure narrative). But no new principle of classification was thereby introduced, so no room was left for the genre of self-expression or the lyric (q.v.), in whicvh the poet expresses directly her or his own thoughts or feelings. The extensive use of Homer as a model gave clear if implicit preference to the epic, a point echoed in Laws, which comments effectually mark the beginning of the hierarchy of genres. The classification is as much moral as it is literary. Plato says subsequently that the guardians should imitate only the most suitable characters (395) but that there are impersonators who will imitate anything (397).

Prior to Plato, during the Attic age, we find a wide variety of terms for specific genres: the epic or recited poetry; the drama or acted poetry, subdivided into tragedy and comedy (qq.v.); then iambic or satirical poetry, so called because written in iambic meter (see IAMBIC; INVECTIVE; CHOLIAMBUS); and elegiac poetry (see ELEGY), also written in a distinctive meter, the elegiac couplet (see ELEGIAC DISTYCH), with its offshoots the epitaph and the epigram (qq.v.), all classed together because composed in the same meter. Then there was choral or melic poetry (q.v.), as it was later called, poetry sung by a chorus to the accompaniment of a flute or stringed instrument. Melic poverty comes closest to our concept of the lyric, but it is not divorced from music and it excludes what we consider the essentially lyric genres of the elegy and epigram. In addition, there was the hymn (q.v.), the dirge (q.v.) or threnos, and the dithyramb (q.v.), a composition in honor of Dionysius which could be anything from a hymn to a miniature play. Songs of triumph or of celebration included the paean, the encomium, the epinikion, and the epithalamium (qq.v.) There was certainly plenty of material in Greek poetry to make up a concept of lyric poetry, but the early Greeks apparently contented themselves with classifying by such criteria as metrical form.

The purely extrinsic scheme used for the nonce by Plato is taken up by Aristotle in Poetics ch. 3, where it becomes the foundation of his main classification of poetic genres. Aristotle gives no express recognition of the lyric there, much less in his statement that in the second of these genres the poet "speaks in his own person": that is merely Aristotle's way of saying that the narrative is the poet's own discourse and not a speech by a fictitious character of drama. So the traditional tripartite division of poetic genres or kinds into epic, dramatic, and lyric, far from being a "natural" division first discovered by the Greek genius, is not to be found in either Plato or Aristotle. It was, rather, the result of a long and tedious process of compilation or adjustment, through the repetition with slight variations of certain traditional lists of poetic genres, which did not reach the modern formula of the three divisions until the 16th century.

Nevertheless, Aristotle's classifications of kind in the Poetics make him the source and arbiter of genre study (though often at only second or even third hand, and frequently warped) for nearly two millennia. Like Plato, Aristotle argues that poetry is a species of imitation. The medium of imitation concerns the instrumentality through which the various kinds are presented. The object of imitation, men in action, has both contentual and moral aspects, tragedy and comedy dealing with men as better or worse than they are; but the package is not nearly so neat because Cleophon, though a tragic poet, represents a middle way, men as they are—a significant point which shows how Aristotle's examples can complicate the issue appropriately. On the manner of imitation, Aristotle continues the general Platonic divisions according to the status of the speaker.

All of this supports the view that Aristotle is arguably the first formalist, the first exponent of organic unity (see ORGANICISM); for him, mode, object, and manner, working together, not only make for the "character" of the kind but affect (and effect) all that each aspect does and is. Yet he is a formalist and a good deal more, for his connection of genre with tone and moral stance led not only to later quarrels about decorum (q.v.) and mixed modes but also, and more profitably, about the ways in which texts seek to conceive and appropriate tha world—that is, the difficult business of representation, including his implicit debate with Plato over its possibilities and value.

After Aristotle, it was Alexandrian scholarship that undertook the first comprehensive stock-taking of Greek poetry and began the process of grouping, grading, and classifying genres. Lists or "canons" of the best writers of each kind were made, which led to a sharper awareness of genre. The first extant grammarian to mention the lyric as a genre was Dionysius Thrax (2d c. B.C.), in a list which comprises, in all, the following: "Tragedy, Comedy, Elegy, Epos, Lyric, and Threnos," lyric meaning for him, still, poetry sung to the lyre. In Alexandrian literature, other genres were added to the list, especially the idyll and pastoral (qq.v.).

The Greek conceptions of genre were themselves radically generic in the sense of putting the issues in their elemental forms. What followed—adulation, elaboration, correction, rejection—built on those ways of working. Yet it was clear to later Classicism (q.v.) that these treatises needded supplementary detail, their nearly exclusive emphases on epic and tragedy being insufficient to cover the complex topography of genre. Futher, with the model of the Greeks so potent that there was no thought of undoing their principles, it seemed best not only to elaborate but to clarify and purify, to establish principles of tact which were not only matters of taste (q.v.) but, ultimately, of the appropriate. The Middle Ages, and later, the 17th c., was a time for codification, which could slip easily into rules (q.v.). Quintilian's Institutio oratoria argued for such practices, but most important was Horace's Ars poetica (a name given by Quintilian to the Epistula ad Pisones), a text of extraordinary influence bevcause so many later students read the Greeks through Horace's letter (see CLASSICAL POETICS). The attitudes of Horace were often taken as the classical ways.

Party of the irony is that his letter is not particularly original: its outstanding contribution is the principle of decorum. Aristotle had referred to the interrelation of style with theme, but in Horace this combined with the demands of urbanity and propriety to become the principal emphasis. Tragedy does not babble light verses. Plays ought to be in five acts, no more and no less, with all bloodiness offstage. Plunge into epics in medias res (q.v.), but echo the categories of the strong predecessors either by telling those events or have them acted out. At this distance, Horace comes through mainly as the exponent of a set of mind, one who shourely had much to do with later equations of social and literary decorum. Given his emphasis on "the labor of the file," he is probably best seen as the ultimate craftsman, completer of the Classical triumvirate on which genre study built for most of the rest of Western literary history.

Schlolars are generally agreed that the Middle Ages offered little if any commentary of permanent value on the theory of genre, and they usually cite Dante's remarks in De vulgari eloquentia (ca. 1305) as the major points of interest. In fact though, Dante's account shows a curious transformation of tradition, especially in his insistence that his poem is a comedy because it has a happy ending and is written in a middle style; this sense of "comedy" Dante found in Donatus, De comoedia, and Euanthius, De fabula. Dante argued for a quasi-Horatian decorum of genre and style. In a sense the Commedia culminates medieval mixtures of the grotesque and the sublime (qq.v.), as in the mystery plays (see LITURGICAL DRAMA), but it also suggests, if unwittingly, an undoing of generic norms that was to cause much bitter controversy in subsequent approaches.

As though to counter such implicit subversion, the theorists of the Italian Renaissance focused intensely on genre (see RENAISSANCE POETICS); the rediscovery of the Poetics around 1500 became an impetus to codifications such as had never been conceived even in the most rigorous late Classical formulations. Part of the intensity came from the wide variety of genres and mixed modes such as the prosimetrum (q.v.) practiced in the Middle Ages, leading to the blend of medieval romance (q.v.) and epic in figures such as Ariosto and Tasso. If there were 16th-c. defenders of these "mixed" works—among which tragicomedy (q.v.) was surely the most notorious (Guarini argued in his own defense, but the greatest of the kind were written in England)—there were codifiers such as Scaliger and Castelvetro who had considerable influence well into the 18th century.

Out of these theorists came that ultimate codification, the "unities" of time, place, and action (see UNITY), which was finally put to rest only in the 18th. c. by critics such as Samuel Johnson (see NEOCLASSICAL POETICS). Though they were claimed to have their sources in Aristotle's categories, in fact these arguments distorted Aristotle and carried Horatian conservatism to reactionary lengths. French Neoclassicism continued the codification, quite brilliantly in Boileau's Art poétique, more ambivalently in Corneille's Discours, the latter an apologia for his dramatic practice which is, at the same time, an act of support for the unities. Suggestions that Neoclassical generic hierarchies and standards of decorum have sociopolitical and philosophical implications are, for the most part, convincing: the potential analogies among these favorite subjects ensured their mutual support and offer still another instance of the relations of literature and power. Yet as both literature and society worked their way into romanticism (q.v.), most of those hierarchies shifted: in literature the lyric ascended to the top of the hierarchy, signaling the confirmation of the triad of lyric, epic (i.e. narrative), and drama which is set forth by Hegel and still dominates genre theory. Friedrich Schlegel (in his Dialogue on Poetry [1800] and essay on Goethe [1828]) artued for the abolition of generic classifications, which would in efffect eliminate genre. Schlegel and others had in mind the example of Cervantes, expanding the concept of the novel to speak of it as a package that could carry all other genres within itself, e.g. ballads and romances within tales as in Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk and, memorably, Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. International romanticism explored such issues routinely. But when 19th-c. Darwinian biology found application to literature, it produced a rigidly evolutionary theory of genre in Brunetière and others., a dead-end whose main value is that it annoyed theorists like Croce, who considered genres as mere abstractions, useful in the construction of classifications for practical convenience, but of no value as aesthetic categories. Thereby it stimulated interest in grenre theory in the 20th century, one of the great ages of speculation on the subject.

Croce became the case against which theorists tested themselves for much of the early 20th century (see EXPRESSION). If genre classifications have a certain convenience, they nevertheless conflict with Croce's conception of the individual work of art as the product of a unique intuition (q.v.). Genre, in this view, has a merely nominalist existence, a position echoed in varying ways by later theorists as significant and different as Jameson and, in one of his moods, the unclassifiable Frye—though the latter set up an elaborate system of classification which all commentators have taken as another way of talking about genre. Todorov's structuralist attack on Frye resulted in a controversial proposal concerning historical and theoretical genres, but Frye remains the most important theorist of the subject since Croce. Scholars like Fowler have argued eloquently for looser, more historically based readings, recognizing the fact of change and the necessity for flexibility, while concepts like intertextuality (q.v.) obviously have much of importance to say about the workings of genre. Formalists of various persuasions have worried about genre in terms of form-content relations (see ORGANICISM). Drawing on the work of Karl Viëtor, Claudio Guillén distinguishes persuasively between universal modes of experience (lyric, epic, drama) and genres proper (tragedy or the sonnet). Other recent theorists argue for the institutional nature of genre for its functions as a series of codes, and (less convincingly) as an element in a langue-parole relationship, while Fowler and others, working out of Frye, stress the significance of the concept of "mode." Still, Jameson's argument that genre theory has been discredited by modern thinking about literature seems now largely convincing. Recognition of the embodiment of literature in the necessary shifting conditions of culture has led a number of theorists to argue that a genre is whatever a particular text or time claims it to be. Skepticism about universals has clearly taken its toll, as have, in other ways, the arguments of Croce. Such skepticism has appeared among contemporary artists as well, e.g. the performance artist Laurie Anderson and the composer-writer-performer John Cage, who pull down all walls of distinction among genres and media as well as what has been called "high art" and "low art" (Here as elsewhere sociocultural elements cannot be separated from other facets of the work.) Terms like "multimedia" and "intermedia" can be complemented by others such as "intergeneric," such practices denying, in varying degree, the validity of absolute distinctions, categories, and hierarchies. Theorizing about genre has not been so vigorous since the 16th century. The suggestiveness of the 20th century's quite variegated work makes it a period of extraordinary achievement in the history of this stubborn, dubious, always controversial concept. For further discussion of mode and genre see VERSE AND PROSE; see also CANON; CONVENTION; FORM; ORGANICISM; RULES.


JOURNAL: Genre 1— (1968-).
STUDIES:  F. Brunetière, L'Evolution des genres. 7th ed. (1922); B. Croce,  Aesthetic, tr. D. Ainslie, 2nd ed. (1922); J. Petersen, "Zur Lehre von den Dichtungsgattungen," Festschrift Aug. Sauer (1925); K. Viëtor, "Probleme der literarische Gattungsgeschichte," DVLG 9 (1931), "Die Geschichte der literarischen Gattungen," Geist und Form (1952); R. Bray, Des Genres littéraires (1937); K. Burke, "Poetic Categories." Attitudes toward History (1937); I. Behrens, Die Lehre von der Einteilung der Dichtkunst (1940)—best account of development of genre classification  in Western literature; J. J. Donohue, The Theory of Literary Kinds, 2 v. (1943-49)—ancient Greek genre classifications; I. Ehrenpreis, The "Types Approach" to Literature. (1945); C. Vincent, Théorie des genres littéraires, 21st ed. (1951); Abrams, chs. 1, 4. 6; E. Olson, "An Outline of Poetic Theory," in Crane; A. E. Harvey, "The Classification of Greek Lyric Poetry." ClassQ n.s. 5 (1955); Wellek and Warren, ch. 17; Frye; Wimsatt and Brooks; Weinberg, ch. 13; C. F. P. Stutterheim, "Prolegomena to a Theory of Literary Genres." ZRL 6 (1964); B. K. Lewalski, Milton's Brief Epic (1966), Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (1985), ed., Renaissance Genres (1986); F. Séngle, Die literarische Formenlehre (1967); W. V. Ruttkowski, Die literarischen Gattungen (1968)—bibl. with trilingual indices, Bibliographie der Gattungspoetik (1973); E. Staiger, Grundbegriffe der Poetik (1968), tr. J. C. Hudson and L. T. Frank as Basic Concepts of Poetics (1991); K. R. Scherpe, Gattungspoetik im 18 Jh. (1968); E. Vivas, "Literary Classes: Some Problems," Genre 1 (1968); H.-R. Jauss, "Littérature médiévale et théorie des genres," Poétique 1 (1970); T. Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique (1970); Genres in Discourse (tr. 1990); M. Fubini, Entstehung und Geschichte der literarischen Gattungen (1971); C. Guillén, Literature as System (1971), chs. 4-5; P. Hernadi, Beyond Genre (1972); F. Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Literature (1972); R. L. Colie, The Resources of Kind: Genre Theory in the Renaissance (1973); K. W. Hempfer, Gattungstheorie (1973); R. Cohen, "On the Interrelations of 18th-c. Literary Forms," and R. W. Rader, "The Concept of Genre and 18th-C. Studies," New Approaches to 18th-C. Literature, ed. P. Harth (1974); A. Jolles, Einfache Formen, 5th ed. (1974); G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, tr. T. M. Knox (1975); G. Genette, "Genres, 'types,' modes," Poétique 32 (1977); K. Müller-Dyes, Literarische Gattungen (1978); "Theories of Literary Genre," ed. J. Strelka, special issue of YCC 8 (1978); Special Issue on Genre, Glyph 7 (1980); Special Issue on Genre Theory, Poetics 10, 2-3 (1981); F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious (1981); Fowler—the major modern study; H. Dubrow, Genre (1982); W. E. Rogers, The Three Genres and the Interpretation of Lyric (1983); B. J. Bond, Literary Transvaluation from Vergilian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy (1984); Canons, ed. R. von Hallberg (1984); Discourse and Literature: New Appproaches to the Analysis of Literary Genres, ed. T. A. van Dijk (1984); T. G. Rosenmeyer, "Ancient Literary Genres: A Mirage?" YCGL 34 (1985); Postmodern Genres, ed. M. Perloff (1989).

[By Frederick Garber, T. V. F. Brogan et al.]

Programa

Programa de la asignatura Géneros literarios en la literatura inglesa I

El objetivo principal de la asignatura Géneros literarios en la literatura inglesa I es el de proporcionar a las/los estudiantes conocimientos básicos sobre la literatura dramática inglesa a partir del Renacimiento, así como destrezas para su comprensión y análisis. Por medio de clases tanto teóricas como prácticas (enfocadas al estudio de textos representativos de cada época) se tratará de que el alumnado adquiera un nivel un nivel adecuado a las exigencias de una asignatura de cursos avanzados de Grado en cuanto a competencia literaria, entendida en este caso como aquello que nos permite comprender la obra dramática como tal, que nos la hace inteligible como objeto artístico y medio de comunicación social dentro de un determinado sistema histórico de motivos, temas, convenciones y géneros literarios y teatrales, y dentro de un contexto de discursos y formas de comunicación sociales y culturales. Al tiempo que se incrementan los conocimientos de la/el estudiante y sus habilidades para comprender y analizar las obras dramáticas de un periodo específico, se pretende mejorar también sus habilidades generales en lo que respecta a la utilización de la lengua inglesa en un contexto académico y crítico.

Evaluación
Consistirá en la realización de una prueba de naturaleza global, dividida en dos partes:
I) Examen escrito: 40%. Preguntas sobre los temas y obras tratados en clase.
II) El alumno/a podrá elegir completar la prueba global por medio de una de estas dos opciones:
a) Entrega de dos trabajos de comentario de texto: 1) individual, de comentario de texto (30%); y 2) grupal, análisis crítico-histórico de un drama (30%).
b) O bien realización de otra prueba escrita consistente en un ejercio de comentario de texto (60%).
Se valorará la habilidad para definir conceptos; conocer y explicar datos sobre géneros/autores/obras del periodo; relacionar temas; y desarrollar interpretaciones personales, en relación todo ello tanto con la parte más teórica de la asignatura como con la parte referente a las lecturas. Habrá que alcanzar una nota mínima de 4.5 puntos en una parte para que medie con la calificación de la otra parte (1,8 / 2,7 puntos respectivamente).

Los alumnos que deseen realizar una exposición en clase en lugar de entregar uno de los trabajos pueden comunicarlo al profesor para acordar la fecha más conveniente.

Temario

Las clases teóricas serán impartidas por dos profesores: J. A. García Landa (temas 1-5) y otro profesor por asignar (temas 6-8).

La asignatura se estructura en seis unidades. Tras una introducción al fenómeno teatral, los diversos temas se centrarán en los aspectos más sobresalientes del drama en inglés desde el Renacimiento, siguiendo un orden cronológico:

1. Introducción
Lecturas obligatorias: Aristóteles, "Poética" (selección)
Erving Goffman, "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" (selección)

2. El teatro renacentista
Lecturas obligatorias: Christopher Marlowe, "Doctor Faustus".
Selecciones de Thomas Kyd, "The Spanish Tragedy"; Ben Jonson, "Volpone"; John Webster, "The Duchess of Malfi" (obra incluida entera en las fotocopias).

3. Shakespeare: obras históricas
Lecturas obligatorias: "King Henry V".
Selecciones de "King Richard II" "King Richard III", etc.

4. Shakespeare: comedias y tragicomedias
Lecturas obligatorias: "The Tempest"
Selecciones de "Twelfth Night" y "As You Like It"

5. Shakespeare: tragedias
Lecturas obligatorias: "Macbeth"
Selecciones de "Julius Caesar", "Hamlet" y "Othello".

6. Géneros teatrales de la Restauración y el siglo XVIII
Selecciones de John Milton, "Samson Agonistes", John Dryden, "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (incluidas enteras en las fotocopias), William Congreve, "The Way of the World" (Act 5) y Oliver Goldsmith, "She Stoops to Conquer" (Act 5)

7. El teatro realista y el teatro poético: del siglo XIX al XX
Selections from Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest" (Act 1) ; G. B. Shaw, "Pygmalion" (Act 2), J. B. Priestley, "Time and the Conways" (from Act 2).

8. El teatro desde 1950: los "jóvenes airados", teatro del absurdo, teatro experimental y postmoderno
Lecturas obligatorias: Samuel Beckett, "Krapp's Last Tape"; Edward Bond, "Passion".
Selecciones de John Osborne, "Look Back in Anger" (Act 1); Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (Act 2); Caryl Churchill, "Top Girls" (Act 3); Brian Friel, "Translations" (Act 3)



BIBLIOGRAFÍA RECOMENDADA
La mayoría de las lecturas obligatorias están incluidas en Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/) o son accesibles en otros puntos de la red. El profesor dará indicaciones bibliográficas adicionales y facilitará el visionado de representaciones teatrales en vídeo o versiones fílmicas de las obras. Para los textos de Shakespeare se recomiendan las ediciones del Norton Shakespeare u Oxford Shakespeare.

Manuales e historias literarias
Serán de utilidad para la asignatura las historias de la literatura inglesa recomendadas para las asignaturas de Literatura Inglesa I, II y III, entre ellas las siguientes:

ALEXANDER, Michael. A History of English Literature. Nueva York: Palgrave, 2000.
COOTE, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
SANDERS, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. 2ª ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

Obras sobre drama y teatro:

BERNEY, K. A., et al., eds. Contemporary British Dramatists. Londres, Detroit, Washington DC: St. James Press, 1994.
BRAUNMULLER, A. R., y Michael HATTAWAY, eds. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003.
COHN, Ruby, y Enoch BRATER, eds. Around the Absurd: Essays on Modern and Postmodern Drama. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1990.
CRAIK, T. W., y C. LEECH, eds. The Revels History of Drama in England. 8 vols. Londres: Methuen, 1975-83.
DICKSON, Andrew. The Rough Guide to Shakespeare: The Plays – The Poems – The Life. Londres: Rough Guides, 2005.
ELAM, Keir. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. Londres: Routledge, 2002.
GILMAN, Richard. The Making of Modern Drama. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000.
GURR, Andrew. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.
_____. Playgoing in Shakespeare's London. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
HIDALGO, Pilar, et al. Historia crítica del teatro inglés. Alcoy: Marfil, 1988.
HYLAND, Peter. An Introduction to Shakespeare: The Dramatist in His Context. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.
INNES, Christopher. Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.
LANE, David. Contemporary British Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010.
LEGGATT, Alexander. English Drama: Shakespeare to the Restoration, 1590-1660. Londres: Longman, 1988.
PFISTER, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.
RICKS, Christopher, ed. English Drama to 1710. Londres: Sphere, 1971.
SHANK, Theodore, ed. Contemporary British Theatre. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1994.
SIERZ, Aleks, Martin MIDDEKE y Peter Paul SCHNIERER, eds. The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights. Methuen Drama, 2011.
SCHECHNER, Richard. Performance Theory. Nueva York: Routledge, 1988.
STYAN, J. L. The English Stage: A History of Drama and Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.
TAYLOR, John Russell. Anger and After: A Guide to the New British Drama. Londres: Eyre Methuen, 1978.
TRUSSLER, Simon, ed. The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.
WOMACK, Peter. English Renaissance Drama. Blackwell, 2006.




RECURSOS COMPLEMENTARIOS EN INTERNET:

Referencias de carácter general:

Información bibliográfica más detallada por autores, épocas y géneros puede encontrarse en A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology, http://bit.ly/abibliog

English Plays (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:English_plays

Luminarium: Restoration and Eighteenth Century
http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/

Shakespeare Online 

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/

The Stage Online: Newsblog
http://www.thestage.co.uk/newsblog/

Theatre Database
http://www.theatredatabase.com/

Voice of the Shuttle
http://vos.ucsb.edu/

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Guía docente de la asignatura Géneros Literarios en la Literatura Inglesa I (web)




—oOo—

TUTORÍAS Y CONSULTAS:

Horario de tutorías (J. A. García Landa, principio del primer cuatrimestre): Lunes 12-14h, martes 12-14h y 17-19h.
Despacho 307 D, tercera planta de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (c/San Juan Bosco)

Consultas: por correo electrónico, garciala@unizar.es

o por teléfono 976 761530

El mundo como teatro

 
Platón, República (s. IV a.c.)

(Sócrates:) "Piensa entonces, Adeimanto, si nuestros guardianes deberían o no ser aficionados a las imitaciones. O, antes bien, ¿no ha quedado decidida ya esta cuestión con la regla ya establecida, según la cual un hombre puede hacer bien sólo una cosa, y no muchas; y que quien se dedica a muchas no conseguirá mucha fama en ninguna de ellas?
(A.). Ciertamente
(S.). ¿Y esto también es cierto de la imitación: que nadie puede imitar muchas cosas tan bien como imitaría una sola?
(A.). En efecto, no puede.
(S.). Entonces, la misma persona mal podrá representar un papel serio en la vida, y a la vez ser un imitador e imitar muchos otros papeles. Porque incluso en el caso en el que dos tipos de imitación están muy ligados, las mismas personas no pueden tener éxito en ambos, como, por ejemplo los escritores de tragedias y los de comedias—¿no las llamaste imitaciones, hace un momento?
(A.). Sí que lo hice, y tienes razón al pensar que las mismas personas no pueden tener éxito en ambas cosas.
(S.). ¿Como tampoco pueden ser a la vez rapsodas y actores a la vez?
(A.). Cierto.
(S.). Ni tampoco emplean los autores cómicos y trágicos a los mismos actores; y no obstante todas estas cosas son imitaciones.
(A.). Lo son.
(S.). Y la naturaleza humana, Adeimanto, parece haber sido acuñada en monedas aún menores, y ser tan incapaz de imitar muchas cosas bien, como de llevar bien a cabo las acciones copiadas por las imitaciones.

(...)

¿No has observado acaso cómo las imitaciones que comienzan a una edad temprana y que continúan mucho tiempo en la vida al final desarrollan hábitos, y se convierten en una segunda naturaleza, que afecta al cuerpo, a la voz y a la mente?

(...)

En lo que se refiere al hombre de vida ordenada (...), cuando llega el momento de describir algún dicho o acción de otro hombre bueno—creo que de buena gana lo representará, y no se avergonzará de efectuar este tipo de imitación: estará muy deseoso de interpretar el papel del hombre bueno cuando actúa con firmeza o con sabiduría." (Libro III).

—oOo—

Platón, Filebo:

"Sócrates: El razonamiento nos indica, pues, que en los duelos y en las tragedias y comedias, no sólo en el teatro sino también en toda la tragedia y comedia de la vida, los dolores están mezclados con los placeres, y también en otras muchísimas ocasiones." (50)

—oOo— 

Platón: Las Leyes: 

"también nosotros, en la medida de nuestras capacidades, somos dramaturgos, y nuestro drama es el mejor y el más noble, porque la totalidad de nuestro Estado es una imitación de la vida mejor y más noble, lo cual afirmamos que es efectivamente la verdad misma del drama. Vosotros sois poetas y nosotros somos poetas . . . rivales y antagonistas en el más noble de los dramas." 

—oOo— 

Epicuro (c. 300 a.C.)

Satis magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus — Somos teatro más que suficiente unos para otros. (Un dicho criticado por Bacon en su ensayo "Of love").

 —oOo— 

Cicerón (s. I a.C.)

Recuerda que los más grandes [dolores] terminan con la muerte; que los pequeños tienen muchos intervalos de calma, y que los medianos somos dueños nosotros de soportarlos, si son tolerables; y, si no lo son, de retirarnos serenamente de la vida, como de un teatro, cuando no nos agrada. (De finibus bonorum et malorum, 1,49)

 —oOo— 

Séneca, Epístola 80.7

 ..."este drama de la vida humana, en el que se nos asignan los papeles que tan mal hemos de representar." Séneca pasa a contraponer la realidad del pobre actor con los regios papeles que representa: ""Allí está el hombre que se pasea por el escenario con andares orgullosos y con la frente levantada.." 

 —oOo—

Epicteto, Manual, §17 (siglo I):

"Recuerda que eres actor de un drama, con el papel que quiera el director: si quiere uno corto, corto; si uno largo, largo; si quiere que representes a un pobre, represéntalo con nobleza: como a un cojo, un gobernante, un particular. Eso es lo tuyo: representar bien el papel que te han dado; pero elegirlo es cosa de otro."

—oOo—

San Agustín (siglo IV): 

"También nosotros estamos actuando en la vida, en este mimo nuestro."



—oOo—


Para Honorio de Autun (siglo XII), el sacerdote es  un "tragicus" que representa para el pueblo de Dios, en el teatro de la iglesia, el esfuerzo de Cristo y les imprime la victoria de su redención.

—oOo—

A partir del siglo XII, el amor cortés y el ideal caballeresco literarizado se adoptan en la vida social aristocrática como role models — a modo de una teatralización de la vida social, siguiendo patrones literarios.

 —oOo—

Michel de Montaigne, Ensayos (I, XX), sobre la indiferencia a la muerte:

"Y en el peor de los casos, la distribución y variedad de todos los actos de mi comedia se acaba en un año. Si os habéis fijado en el movimiento de mis cuatro estaciones, habréis visto que abarcan la infancia, la adolescencia, la virilidad y la vejez del mundo. Ha interpretado su papel. No sabe sino volver a empezar. Siempre será igual." (Ensayos completos, 135)

                                                               —oOo—

Ephemerality of the court masque too in Daniel: "Are they shadows that we see" (Thetys' Festival). 


—oOo—

Cervantes, Don Quijote (II.xii), tras el encuentro con la carreta de los comediantes de las Cortes de la Muerte:

—Todavía—respondió Don Quijote—, si tú, Sancho, me dejaras acometer, como yo quería, te hubieran cabido en despojos, por lo menos, la corona de oro de la Emperatriz y las pintadas alas de Cupido; que yo se las quitara al redropelo y te las pusiera en las manos.
—Nunca los cetros y coronas de los emperadores farsantes—respondió Sancho Panza—fueron de oro puro, sino de oropel o hoja de lata.
—Así es verdad—replicó Don Quijote—; porque no fuera acertado que los atavíos de la comedia fueran finos, sino fingidos y aparentes, como lo es la mesma comedia, con lo cual quiero, Sancho, que estés bien, teniéndola en tu gracia, y por el mismo consiguente a los que las representen y a los que las componen, porque  todos son instrumentos de hacer un gran bien a la república, poniéndonos un espejo a cada paso delante, donde se veen al vivo las acciones de la vida humana, y ninguna comparación hay que más al vivo nos represente lo que somos y lo que habemos de ser como la comedia y los comediantes. Si no, dime: ¿no has visto representar alguna comedia adonde se introducen reyes, emperadores y pontífices, caballeros, damas y otros diversos personajes? Uno hace el rufián, otro el embustero, éste el simple discreto, otro el enamorado simple; y acabada la comedia y desnudándose de los vestidos della, quedan todos los recitantes iguales.
—Sí he visto—respondió Sancho.
—Pues lo mesmo—dijo Don Quijote—acontece en la comedia y trato deste mundo, donde unos hacen los emperadores, otros los pontífices, y, finalmente, todas cuantas figuras se pueden introducir en una comedia; pero en llegando al fin, que es cuando se le acaba la vida, a todos les quita la muerte las ropas que los diferenciaban, y quedan iguales en la sepultura.
—Brava comparación—dijo Sancho, aunque no tan nueva, que yo no la haya oído muchas y diversas veces, como aquella del juego del ajedrez, que mientras dura el juego cada pieza tiene su particular oficio; y en acabándose el juego, todas se mezclan, juntan y barajan, y dan con ellas en una bolsa, que es como dar con la vida en la sepultura.
—Cada día, Sancho—dijo Don Quijote—, te vas haciendo menos simple y más discreto.

—oOo—

Shakespeare, Soneto 15:

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

   

—oOo—

— As You Like It  (II.7):


DUKE SENIOR

    Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
    This wide and universal theatre
    Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
    Wherein we play in.

JAQUES

    All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
    And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
    And shining morning face, creeping like snail
    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
    Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
    Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
    Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble reputation
    Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,
    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
    His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
    For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

Shakespeare, en As You Like It (2.7-139-66, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players..."

De ahí quizá el lema del Globe Theatre — y su nombre: "Totus mundus agit histrionem" (quizá 'todos somos actores' o quizá 'todos imitamos a los actores').

 Macbeth 5.5. 23-27:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

The Tempest 4.1.148-58:

Our revels now are ended; these our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air;

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded by a sleep. 

—more on Shakespearean metadrama here: "Nought but shows - Music for a while".

—oOo—

Sir Walter Ralegh, "On the life of man":
What is our life? a play of passion;
Our mirth, the music of division:
Our mothers’ wombs the tiring houses be,
Where we are dressed for this short comedy;
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is,
That sits and marks still who doth act amiss;
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
Are like drawn curtains when the play is done:
Thus march we playing to our latest rest;
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest.

—oOo—



Cervantes y el teatro vivido de "El curioso impertinente"

Y más sobre la vida como teatro.


—oOo—

John Donne, from Holy Sonnets, "This Is My Playes Last Scene"

This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint

My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race,

Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,

My span's last inch, my minute's latest point;

And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint

My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;

But my'ever-waking part shall see that face

Whose fear already shakes my every joint.

Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight,

And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,

So fall my sins, that all may have their right,

To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell.

Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil,

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

—oOo—

  Francisco de Quevedo, Epicteto y Phocílides en español con consonantes (Madrid, 1635):

No olvides que es comedia nuestra vida
y teatro de farsa el mundo todo
que muda el aparato por instantes
y que todos en él somos farsantes;
acuérdate que Dios, de esta comedia
de argumento tan grande y tan difuso,
es autor que la hizo y la compuso.
Al que dio papel breve,
solo le tocó hacerle como debe;
y al que se le dio largo,
solo el hacerle bien dejó a su cargo.
Si te mandó que hicieses
la persona de un pobre o un esclavo,
de un rey o de un tullido,
haz el papel que Dios te ha repartido;
pues solo está a tu cuenta
hacer con perfección el personaje,
en obras, en acciones, en lenguaje;
que al repartir los dichos y papeles,
la representación o mucha o poca
solo al autor de la comedia toca.

 —oOo—



Calderón, El Gran Teatro del Mundo, (1655):

 El personaje del Autor (Dios) habla al Mundo:
Pues soy tu Autor, y tú mi hechura eres,
hoy, de un concepto mío
la ejecución a tus aplausos fío.
Una fiesta hacer quiero
a mi mismo poder, si considero
que solo a ostentación de mi grandeza
fiestas hará la gran naturaleza;
y como siempre ha sido
lo que más ha alegrado y divertido
la representación bien aplaudida,
y es representación la humana vida,
una comedia sea
la que hoy el cielo en tu teatro vea.
Si soy Autor y si la fiesta es mía,
por fuerza la ha de hacer mi compañía.
Y pues que yo escogí de los primeros
los hombres , y ellos son mis compañeros,
ellos, en el Teatro
del mundo, que contiene partes cuatro,
con estilo oportuno
han de representar. Yo a cada uno
el papel le daré que le convenga,
y porque en fiesta igual su parte tenga
el hermoso aparato
de apariencias, de trajes el ornato,
hoy prevenido quiero
que, alegre, liberal y lisonjero,
fabriques apariencias
que de dudas se pasen a evidencias.
Seremos, yo el Autor, en un instante,
tú el teatro, y el hombre el recitante.
                                                 (36-66)


(el Autor responde a un pobre que se queja de su papel:)

En la representación
igualmente satisface
el que bien al pobre hace
con afecto, alma y acción
como el que hace al rey, y son
iguales este y aquel
en acabando el papel.
Haz tú bien el tuyo y piensa
que para la recompensa
yo te igualaré con él.
No porque pena te sobre,
siendo pobre, es en mi ley
mejor papel el del rey
si hace bien el suyo el pobre;
uno y otro de mí cobre
todo el salario después
que haya merecido, pues
con cualquier papel se gana,
que toda la vida humana
representaciones es.
Y la comedia acabada
ha de cenar a mi lado
el que haya representado,
sin haber errado en nada,
su parte más acertada;
allí igualaré a los dos. (409-34)



—oOo—

Fielding, el mundo como puro teatro.

—oOo—

From The Short Oxford History of English Literature, by Andrew Sanders (1994)

"In the Preface to Castle Rackrent [1800] Edgeworth had recognized the fluid relationship between her fiction and the writing of history. In a way that prefigures Thackeray's suspicion of the elevation of fancy-dress heroes by historians, she states her preference for a history which looks beyond the 'splendid characters playing their parts on the great theatre of the world' and which begs to be admitted behind the scenes 'that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses'."

—oOo—

Sartre, La nausée.  El camarero interpretando el papel de camarero.



—oOo—

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality— social roles based on secondary socialization following the individual's primary acquisition of a social identity and a world in childhood:

"Secondary socialization is the internalization of institutional or institution-based 'sub-worlds'. Its extent and character are therefore determined by the complexity of the division of labour and the concomitant social distribution of knowledge" (1966: 158)

"This makes it possible to detach a part of the self and its concomitant reality as relevant only to the role-specific situation in question. The individual then establishes distance between his total self and its reality on the one hand, and the role-specific partial self and its reality on the other. This important feat is possible only after primary socialization has taken place. Put crudely once more, it is easier for the child 'to hide' from his teacher than from his mother. Conversely, it is possible to say that the development of this capacity 'to hide' is an important aspect of the process of growing into adulthood" (1966: 162)

—oOo—



A note to David Marshall's The Figure of Theater: Shaftesbury, Adam Smith, Defoe, and George Eliot (Columbia University Press, 1986): 

Introd., note 6:

In addition to the works cited above, there is a rich and growing body of studies which focuses on theater, theatricality, role-playing, play, and related topics in a variety of disciplines and historical periods. Questions about the theatrical conditions of the self and its relation to others are addressed throughout the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and Kenneth Burke. Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses "le spectacle du monde," "le théâtre de l'imaginaire"," and the other as "spectateur étranger" in Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), (pp. iii, v, vii). In sociology, Erving Goffman's work (especially The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959) is concerned with role-playing and the theatrical relations of everyday life; while in anthropology, Clifford Geertz has presented important analyses of theatrical dynamics in Balinese culture. (See "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays [New York: Basic Books, 1973], pp. 412-453, and Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth-Century Bali [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980], pp. 98-136). Richard Sennett discusses roles, actors and spectators, and the theaters of public and private life in The Rise of Public Man (New York: Vintage, 1978). Relevant discussions of play include D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1982); Gregory Bateson, "A Theory of Play and Fantasy," in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), pp. 177-193; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 91-150; and Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955). The significance of the role-playing and spectator-spectacle dynamics in the Renaissance is discussed in Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Stephen Greenblatt, Sir Walter Raleigh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973) and Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Margaret Ferguson, "Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller: The 'News of the Maker' Game," English Literary Renaissance (1981), 11(2):165-182; Thomas Greene, "The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature," and A. Bartlett Giamatti, "Proteus Unbound: Some Versions of the Sea God in the Renaissance," in Peter Demetz et al., eds. The Disciplines of Criticism: Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 241-264 and 437-476. Peter Brooks discusses the importance of melodrama for the nineteenth-century novel in The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976). Norton Batkin analyzes the problem of theatricality in the work of Paul Strand (see Photography and Philosophy, Diss. Harvard 1981). Finally, in Worlds Apart: Market and Theater in Anglo-American Thought, 1550-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), a work which treats some of the same issues and authors considered in this book, Jean-Christophe Agnew traces the history of the relation between theater and the markeplace. I cite these various studies both to map some of the territory that forms a context and a background for my own work and to suggest some of the many roads that (inevitably) I have not taken.

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"Somos teatreros: El sujeto, la interacción dialéctica y la estrategia de la representación según Goffman." Artículo de José Angel García Landa:

         http://unizar.academia.edu/Jos%C3%A9AngelGarc%C3%ADaLanda/Papers/1670984/

    

 

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Juan Luis Arsuaga y M. Martín-Loeches: El gran juego.

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De estas cuestiones teatrales y dramatísticas, y de la Vida como Teatro Viviente, tratamos con frecuencia en nuestro blog sobre EL GRAN TEATRO DEL MUNDO. Donde continúa, que no termina, la trama.

Hegel: La comedia y la vida como metadrama

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