Poetry and Drama in English: A Historical Overview PDF

Poetry and Drama in English: A historical overview Drama Part 1: general concepts; tragedy and comedy  Drama General points 1. Definition: drama is the representation of an action by means of a performance 2. A dramatic text is a text designed...

Poetry and Drama in English: A historical overview Drama Part 1: general concepts; tragedy and comedy  Drama General points 1. Definition: drama is the representation of an action by means of a performance 2. A dramatic text is a text designed for performance 3. Drama is a collective activity, which brings the community’s values into question  1. Drama as representation drama: the representation of an action (Aristotle, Poetics) ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Poetics (c. 335 B. C.) Aristotle: art and drama are mimesis (mi-MEE-sis). mimesis is usually translated as “imitation” “representation” is a better translation >>The prefix “re-” suggests a difference between the representation (a drama, a fiction) and what it is based on (human life) >>“representation” then suggests a point of view (on what is being represented); it is not just a copy, but a creation  Plot and character To say that a dramatic text represents “action”, means it has a plot: a pattern of events and situations organized in a meaningful way Aristotle used the word “mythos” to refer to plot. In his Poetics, he emphasizes that a plot must be a coherent whole, with beginning, middle, and end. In tragedy, the plot must give us the sense of the inevitability of the chain of events. The fictional persons who participate in these events are the characters of a dramatic work, represented by actors. The list of characters is the dramatis personae.  Narration and performance Aristotle makes a distinction between two types of representation of an action: you can narrate a story (as in epic poetry), or you can perform it (as in tragedy and comedy) The word “drama” comes from the Greek verb dran, “to do, to act”: a drama is “acted out” (performed) by actors on a stage Very often in plays, we find both: actors perform the events of a story, but they also tell stories about things not represented on stage.  exposition This gives rise to a particular characteristic of dramatic texts: The characters give us information about themselves and their world. (Generally, there is no narrator to tell us about them.) We call this part of a dramatic text the exposition.  The stage space In our dramatic tradition, a performance is usually acted in a visible space set apart from the audience or spectators: the stage. In medieval theatre, however, spectators sat in the stage space, among the actors. Actors can be on stage or off stage (in the wings). On stage, props (properties) are the objects used by the actors; scenery or elements of stage décor serve to represent places. A play or dramatic text is staged in a performance.  Drama as illusion To say that drama depends on performance is also to say that it is an illusion, a fiction: a battle performed on stage is not a “real” battle, a kiss on stage is not a “real” kiss, etc. The illusion of dramatic performance means that on stage, anything can represent anything: a chair can represent a chair, but also a man. The fictional dramatic world is imaginary: no scenery or décor is actually necessary. Dramatic texts and performances differ according to the degree in which they call attention to illusion, or “break” the illusion: what is called their “meta- theatricality”  Meta-theatricality Meta-theatricality: how a play refers to theater itself >> calling attention to the fact that a play is an illusion, a fiction, a performance, reminding the spectator that what she or he is watching is “only a play” How? —by having actors address the audience directly in a soliloquy (if a character is alone) or an aside (if other chars. are present) —by referring to theater itself —by showing characters wearing masks, playing roles, pretending to be somebody else —by introducing a “play within the play” Example: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where some characters practice and perform a play, Pyramus and Thisbe Shakespeare’s plays, in this sense, are metatheatrical: they are constantly referring to theatre itself, theatre is a metaphor for life.  Meta-theatricality: history Meta-theatricality varies throughout the history of theatre: Medieval and Elizabethan theatre were meta- theatrical: they used very little décor on stage. Naturalistic theatre, characteristic of the 19th century, tried to imitate social reality as closely as possible; with detailed, elaborate décors. Modernist (twentieth-century) theatre tends to break down the illusion, for example by using symbolic décors (a tree to represent a forest), a narrator, music, stylized performance, etc.  2. Text and performance Drama involves two aspects: text and performance. The performance is an interpretation of the text which adds new meanings to it (expressive, visual, gestural, musical). Performance studies is now an academic discipline, taught in universities. dramatic text: a text intended for performance, designed to be “acted out” or staged. Dramatic texts are characterized by their “openness” or ambiguity, by the fact that they leave gaps in the information they give us about their world and characters: actors and directors (and spectators) have to interpret them  Dramatic text: two parts A dramatic text is usually composed of two parts: dialogue and stage directions Dialogue: what the characters of the drama say (their speeches or lines) Stage directions: indications about stage décor or scenery, gestures, movements and expressions of the actors Stage directions are usually written  Older dramatic texts (like Shakespeare’s works) have very few stage directions; the actors’ appearance and movements are often indicated implicitly within the dialogue; these are called intra-dialogic stage Stage directions Example: After the witches in Macbeth greet Macbeth directions, with “All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter”, his friend Banquo says to him: “Good Sir, why do you start, and seem to fear/ Things that do sound so fair?” continued (The image shows an engraving of Henry Fuseli’s painting of the scene) Samuel Beckett’s Act without Words (1957) is composed entirely of stage directions, with no dialogue: a mime.  “double enunciation” The fact that a dramatic text is intended for performance determines a fundamental aspect of meaning in drama: The words spoken by actors on stage can mean one thing for the characters within the world of the play, within the story; and something else or something more for the spectators attending the performance This is called the “double enunciation” of dramatic texts  Dramatic irony Double enunciation is the basis of dramatic irony, a situation in which the spectator or reader knows more about what is going on in the play than the characters themselves know When Othello in Shakespeare’s Othello calls his servant Iago “honest Iago” he does not realize that Iago is going to trick, betray, and destroy him; the audience, however, knows that Iago is not “honest”. In Elizabethan times, “honest” was a patronizing term used by masters addressing their servants; when he uses this word, Othello assumes he is the “master” of the situation. Othello and Iago by Solomon Hart (1857) >  3. Collective activity Both in ancient Greece and in the European Middle Ages, drama derives from (religious) ceremony or ritual. Drama is a collective experience, which puts the values of the community into question. In Britain, dramatic performance was subject to censorship between 1737 and 1968: all plays had to be reviewed by a censor before they could be performed. This suggests the subversive potential of drama.  Ancient Greek and Roman models 1. Tragedy From ancient Greek and Roman theatre, we inherit two important dramatic genres, tragedy and comedy Greek tragedy apparently derives from collective rituals: festivals devoted to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine  Greek tragedy Three great authors of Greek tragedy are known to us, of which 33 plays remain: Aeschylus (c.535-456 B.C.), known for his trilogy about the family of the Greek warrior Agamemnon, the Oresteia Sophocles (c.497-406), author of Oedipus the King and Antigone Euripides (c.480-406), author of Medea Theatre competitions began in Athens in 534 B.C. Portrait of a Greek actor, Euiaion, in a play by Sophocles >>  Tragedy according to Aristotle: catharsis Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 B.C.) introduced important ideas about how tragedy works: A. defines tragedy according to the emotions it arouses in the audience: pity and fear The function of tragedy is to allow us to experience emotions which in “real life” would be harmful: the performance “purges” or “cleanses” the audience of these emotions Aristotle calls this purging “catharsis”  Plot of tragedy A tragedy arouses pity and fear by representing a certain kind of action: a human being who falls from good fortune to bad fortune The effect of tragedy depends on the character who undergoes this fall The protagonist cannot be supremely good— otherwise the audience would be disgusted by his misfortune. The protagonist cannot be supremely bad— otherwise the audience would think he got what he deserved.  “tragic flaw” (“error”) (Gk hamartia) To arouse pity and fear in an audience, the protagonist must be a mostly good man or woman who causes his or her own destruction through some weakness or flaw or error In English, this weakness is called a “tragic flaw” In Greek tragedy, the most common flaw is hubris or excessive ambition The audience can only feel pity and fear if it can identify with the protagonist  Aristotle also argues that tragedy arouses pity and fear “Discovery by means of “discovery”, when a character passes from ignorance to knowledge (Greek: “anagnorisis”) Example: Oedipus learns in Oedipus the King that— ” without knowing it—he has killed his father and married his mother (anagnorisi Protagonists of tragedy discover something fundamental about their own humanity: Shakespeare’s King Lear s) learns he is nothing but a “poor, forked animal” above: David Garrick as King Lear in the storm (act 3, sc 2)  Ancient Greek and Roman models 2. Comedy Comedy also goes back to ancient Greece. Like tragedy, it derives from festivals in honor of the god Dionysus. The word “comedy” apparently comes from komos, the name of a noisy procession alternating insults and erotic songs. This procession used to celebrate the arrival of spring. Critics thus associate comedy with the celebration of life forces and physical appetites, in opposition to reason and social convention. Example: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, associated with the May Day festival  Aristotle on comedy According to Aristotle in his Poetics, comedy represents human beings as worse than they really are It depends on the ridiculous, “a mistake or deformity not producing pain or harm in others” Comedy often involves making fun of characters who represent old- fashioned values and conventions which no longer correspond to reality Edmund Landseer, Scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1851  the carnavalesque Mikhail Bakhtin (Russian, 1875-1975) defined the mode of the carnavalesque to explain the work of François Rabelais > carnival: joyous reversal of ordinary hierarchies and values (social hierarchy, sacred vs. profane, spiritual vs. material) > emphasis on the “lower body”, physical appetites and drives: what all human beings share in common  Old Comedy and New Comedy Two kinds of comedy were practiced in ancient Greece, known as Old Comedy and New Comedy The Old Comedy, found in the plays of Aristophanes (445-385), depends on insults, obscene language and direct attacks on known persons to denounce corruption in society The New Comedy, represented first by the plays of Menander, is based on the domestic life of city-dwellers and represents manners and behavior  Roman New Comedy The most well-known authors of New Comedy are the Romans Plautus (254-184 B.C.) and Terence (190-159 B.C.) The comedies of Plautus and Terence provided plots, themes, and characters for European comedies after the Renaissance Shakespeare’s early play The Comedy of Errors is partly based on  Romantic comedy The plot of Romantic comedy usually centers on the love of two young people which is blocked by a member of the older generation (the “senex”; often a parent) Ex. Shakespeare: Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night. Resolution of the situation involves mocking the older generation and its old-fashioned values, and the passage to a new society The play ends with marriage, which symbolizes reconciliation and regeneration  Farce Farce is a species of comedy, distinguished from “higher” forms of comedy supposedly because it aims to make the audience laugh, not to make them think Farce uses extravagant plots, stock or stereotyped characters, and exaggerated movements and gestures (“slapstick”): the body is emphasized Comedy traditionally draws on folk traditions and popular culture, which tend to put into question the values of the social elite>the carnavalesque.  conclusions Several important concepts for drama: drama > representation of an action; text intended for performance performance involves illusion meta-theatricality: plays often refer to theater itself, call attention to theatrical illusion double enunciation: actors’ speeches mean different things for characters and for audience (dramatic irony) tragedy>make an audience feel pity and fear=catharsis comedy: criticises social convention; link to popular festival, the body, the carnivalesque  Questions 1. What is meant by “mimesis”? 2. What are the two parts of a dramatic text? 3. What is meant by meta-theatricality? Give an example. 4. What is dramatic irony? Give an example. 5. What is the aim of tragedy according to Aristotle? 6. What is a “tragic flaw”? 7. What is the plot of a romantic comedy?