The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet

The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet

Author: Gene A. Plunka

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9780838634615

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"In this book, Gene A. Plunka argues that the most important single element that solidifies all of Genet's work is the concept of metamorphosis. Genet's plays and prose demonstrate the transition from game playing to the establishment of one's identity through a state of risk taking that develops from solitude. However, risk taking per se is not as important as the rite of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner's work in ethnography is used as a focal point for the examination of rites of passage in Genet's dramas." "Rejecting society, Genet has allied himself with peripheral groups, marginal men, and outcasts--scapegoats who lack power in society. Much of their effort is spent in revolt or direct opposition in mainstream society that sees them as objects to be abused. As an outcast or marginal man, Genet solved his problem of identity through artistic creation and metamorphosis. Likewise, Genet's protagonists are outcasts searching for positive value in a society over which they have no control; they always appear to be the victims or scapegoats. As outcasts, Genet's protagonists establish their identities by first willing their actions and being proud to do so." "Unfortunately, man's sense of Being is constantly undermined by society and the way individuals react to roles, norms, and values. Roles are the products of carefully defined and codified years of positively sanctioned institutional behavior. According to Genet, role playing limits individual freedom, stifles creativity, and impedes differentiation. Genet equates role playing with stagnant bourgeois society that imitates rather than invents; the latter is a word Genet often uses to urge his protagonists into a state of productive metamorphosis. Imitation versus invention is the underlying dialectic between bourgeois society and outcasts that is omnipresent in virtually all of Genet's works." "Faced with rejection, poverty, oppression, and degradation, Genet's outcasts often escape their horrible predicaments by living in a world of illusion that consists of ceremony, game playing, narcissism, sexual and secret rites, or political charades. Like children, Genet's ostracized individuals play games to imitate a world that they can not enter. Essentially, the play acting becomes catharsis for an oppressed group that is otherwise confined to the lower stratum of society." "Role players and outcasts who try to find an identity through cathartic game playing never realize their potential in Genet's world. Instead, Genet is interested in outcasts who immerse themselves in solitude and create their own sense of dignity free from external control. Most important, these isolated individuals may initially play games, yet they ultimately experience metamorphosis from a world of rites, charades, and rituals to a type of "sainthood" where dignity and nobility reign. The apotheosis is achieved through a distinct act of conscious revolt designed to condemn the risk taker to a degraded life of solitude totally distinct from society's norms and values." --Book Jacket.


Jail Sentences

Jail Sentences

Author: Andrew Sobanet

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0803218559

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A long list of canonical writers in Western literature have experienced incarceration and have subsequently written celebrated works about the imprisoned and the condemned. The French tradition is no exception: writers who produced noteworthy texts while incarcerated or who later wrote about their experiences in prison are found on the literary-historical landscape from the medieval era through the twentieth century. Prison writing by inmates, former guards, chaplains, teachers, and doctors is firmly established as part of the fabric of popular culture and has long attracted the attention of culture critics and scholars. Nevertheless, scant analysis exists of the prison novel a literary genre that, as Andrew Sobanet argues in Jail Sentences, uses fiction as a documentary tool. Its narrative peculiarities, which are the main subjects of Sobanet s study, include the use of autobiographical and testimonial techniques to critique the penitentiary system. Jail Sentences is the definitive study of the legacy of the Western tradition of prison writing in twentieth-century French literature. Although Sobanet focuses primarily on French writers Victor Serge, Jean Genet, Albertine Sarrazin, and François Bon his keen sense of literary dialogue pulls into the orbit of his study an international corpus of work, from Dostoyevsky to Malcolm X. Jail Sentences arrives at a coherent definition of the genre, whose unique conventions stem from the innermost regions of our understanding of stories, truth, fiction, and belief.


West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War

West Germany, Cold War Europe and the Algerian War

Author: Mathilde Von Bulow

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-08-22

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 1107088593

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Examining the clandestine and subversive activities of Algerian nationalists in West Germany and Europe, Mathilde Von Bulow sheds new light on the extent to which FLN activities and French counter-measures impacted the conflict in Algeria and the politics of the global Cold War.


Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism

Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism

Author: Jean-Michel Rabaté

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-05-30

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1501331884

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This volume makes a significant contribution to both the study of Derrida and of modernist studies. The contributors argue, first, that deconstruction is not “modern”; neither is it “postmodern” nor simply “modernist.” They also posit that deconstruction is intimately connected with literature, not because deconstruction would be a literary way of doing philosophy, but because literature stands out as a “modern” notion. The contributors investigate the nature and depth of Derrida's affinities with writers such as Joyce, Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, and Walter Benjamin, among others. With its strong connection between philosophy and literary modernism, this highly original volume advances modernist literary study and the relationship of literature and philosophy.


Holocaust Drama

Holocaust Drama

Author: Gene A. Plunka

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-04-02

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 0521494257

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The Holocaust - the systematic attempted destruction of European Jewry and other 'threats' to the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945 - has been portrayed in fiction, film, memoirs, and poetry. Gene Plunka's study will add to this chronicle with an examination of the theatre of the Holocaust. Including thorough critical analyses of more than thirty plays, this book explores the seminal twentieth-century Holocaust dramas from the United States, Europe, and Israel. Biographical information about the playwrights, production histories of the plays, and pertinent historical information are provided, placing the plays in their historical and cultural contexts.


To Have or Have Not

To Have or Have Not

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2011-10-14

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 078648683X

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In a rapidly changing world, the ways in which economic forces affect both personal and global change can be difficult to track, particularly in the arts. This collection of twenty new essays explores both obscure and famous plays dealing with economic issues. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the text moves from Marx's theories to Wall Street speculation, nineteenth century immigration issues, the excesses of the Gilded Age and the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War II and millennial economic challenges.


Theatre History Studies 2014, Vol. 33

Theatre History Studies 2014, Vol. 33

Author: Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2014-12-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0817358072

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Theatre History Studies 2014, Volume 33, brings together an original collection of essays that explore a topic of growing interest--theatre and war.


Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd

Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd

Author: M. Bennett

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-04-25

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0230118828

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Fifty years after the publication of Martin Esslin's The Theatre of the Absurd , which suggests that 'absurd' plays purport the meaninglessness of life, this book uses the works of five major playwrights of the 1950s to provide a timely reassessment of one of the most important theatre 'movements' of the 20th century.


Approaches to Actor Training

Approaches to Actor Training

Author: John Freeman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1350316180

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This insightful and practically-focused collection brings together different approaches to actor training from professionals based at universities and conservatoires in the UK, the US and Australia. Exploring the cultural and institutional differences which affect actor training, and analysing developments in the field today, it addresses a range of different approaches, from Stanislavski's System to contemporary immersive theatre. With hands-on focus from some of the world's leading programmes, and attention paid to ethical control, consent and safe practice, this book sees expert tutors exploring pathways to sustainable 21st century careers. Designed for tutors, students and practitioners, Approaches to Actor Training examines what it means to train as an actor, what actors-in-training can expect from their programmes of study and how the road to professional accomplishment is mapped and travelled.


Queer exceptions

Queer exceptions

Author: Stephen Greer

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-11-23

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1526113724

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Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or ‘exceptional’ subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre’s attachment to singular lives and experiences. Framed by a detailed exploration of arts festivals as encapsulating the material, entrepreneurial circumstances of contemporary performance-making, this is the first major critical study of solo work since the millennium.