*EAS-1411*:
If you are allotted to this course you will automatically be signed up for the corresponding Übung "Drama Analysis" (Tuesdays 14:15 - 15:45). Be sure to keep this slot free in your timetable.
*EAS-1412*
If you are wrongly allotted to the Übung, please make sure to sign out of it, in order to open up the slot for your fellow students.
Leistungsnachweis
Short response paragraphs or presentations
Final Research Essay (5000 words) or Portfolio
Online/Digitale Veranstaltung
Veranstaltung wird online/digital abgehalten.
Hauptunterrichtssprache
englisch
Sonstiges
*EAS-1411*:
If you are allotted to this course you will automatically be signed up for the corresponding Übung "Drama Analysis" (Tuesdays 14:15 - 15:45). Be sure to keep this slot free in your timetable.
*EAS-1412*
If you are wrongly allotted to the Übung, please make sure to sign out of it, in order to open up the slot for your fellow students.
Scholars largely agree that British drama in the late 19th century was in a sorry state. Theatre was primarily escapist, relying on spectacle and entertainment instead of thoughtful art. While the theatre as a commercial institution flourished, the texts for performance lacked intellectual depth, political relevance, and aesthetic innovation. Melodrama, farce, adaptations of popular novels and French plays, and spectacular Shakespeare survivals dominated the stage, while the small but growing circle of theatre critics and practitioners who urged the need for a ‘New Drama’ found it difficult both to put their vague notions of innovation into practice and to find audiences for their hardly successful plays.
And then, within a decade that started with the premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s _Ghosts_ (1891) and George Bernard Shaw’s lecture on “The Quintessence of Ibsenism” (1890), British drama was propelled to an artistic excellence and a position of cultural relevance it had not known since the Renaissance. As Christopher Innes notes, “The twentieth century is one of the most vital and exciting periods in English drama, rivalling the Elizabethan theatre in thematic scope and stylistic ambition. It has produced a wider range of plays than any previous era: both developing and cutting across traditional genres, as well as extending the subject-matter of the stage.”
In this seminar, we will look at what happened to British drama in the twentieth century, from the ground-breaking influence of Shaw to the postmodernism of the second half of the century. To this purpose, we will read a broad selection of plays and try to work out their common and distinguishing features. In particular, we will focus on the following issues:
• The dominating impact of Realism (and Naturalism) at the beginning of the century and the many forms of modifying, bypassing, or counteracting Realism that soon emerged. In this context, special emphasis will be put not only on aesthetic innovations (e.g. the influences of surrealism and expressionism, the cinema, or the theatre of Bertolt Brecht) but also on the conspicuous preoccupation with myths and the past in plays which, nonetheless, bear a strong connection to contemporary (social) reality.
• The peculiar style and content of “Modern drama”, which, according to David Krasner, “signifies the struggle for self-realization and freedom … and the exploration of anxiety and alienation, a feeling of waiting for something inscrutable.” We will examine how, in the face of the waning significance of traditional sources of meaning and orientation, modern drama explores questions of morality, knowledge, and truth and how the treatment of these questions develops in postmodernity’s atmosphere of epistemological scepticism.
Reading list:
George Bernard Shaw, _Man and Superman_ (1903)
J. M. Barrie, _Peter Pan_ (1904)
John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy, _The Hero Rises Up_ (1969)
Edwar Bond, _Lear_ (1971)
Caryl Churchill, _Vinegar Tom_ (1976)
Pam Gems, _Queen Christina_ (1977)
David Hare and Howard Brenton, _Pravda_ (1985)
Anmelderegeln
Diese Veranstaltung gehört zum Anmeldeset "ELW/ALW/NELK Aufbaumodul BA/LA: PS".
Folgende Regeln gelten für die Anmeldung:
Die Anmeldung ist möglich von 02.10.2020, 10:00 bis 26.10.2020, 10:00.
Es wird eine festgelegte Anzahl von Plätzen in den Veranstaltungen verteilt.
Die Plätze in den betreffenden Veranstaltungen wurden am 26.10.2020 um 14:00 verteilt. Weitere Plätze werden evtl. über Wartelisten zur Verfügung gestellt.
Diese Regel gilt von 02.10.2020 10:00 bis 26.10.2020 10:00. Die Anmeldung zu maximal 1 Veranstaltungen des Anmeldesets ist erlaubt.
