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This paper is a comparative study of Aristotle's Poetics and Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading to discover and determine values in literature, especially poetry, which reflect on the nature and the manifestations of human communication. I feel that scholars in the field of communication can benefit personally and academically from exposure to those poets who have expr essed themselves on the reasons or the manners in which people communicate. To pursue this question requires the use of a guide to poetry, a method by which I can learn to recognize a poem on sight; so that when it comes to discourse about the communicative values of poetry, I can be assured that it is poetry and not some other thing which would be the subject of discourse. The guide is called a poetics. From among the various texts on poetics I have selected these two because not only do they contain scholarship and observation of extraordinary acumen, but also because a comparison between the two can produce valuable similarities and differences, which are of further use in establishing values for a given text of poetics.

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Aristotle proclaimed in his Poetics that there were six elements to drama: spectacle, music, diction, thought, character, and plot. This paper will analyze the play Thom Pain (based on nothing) against these six elements. I will discuss the aspects of each element that are present in the show as well as the ideas and concepts my director, Tad Ingram, and I brought to the show. Through the rehearsal and performance process I discovered a seventh element; the element of fearlessness. In his Poetics, Aristotle does not fully address what the actor brings to the performance and this aspect is just as important as what the script and staging bring to the performance.

[Typescript] Includes bibliography.

This thesis presents a historical analysis of literature through the intriguing (but often overlooked) overarching concepts of art –“das Mögliche”, “das Wirkliche” and “das Unmögliche”– and the changes in the historical orientations they represent. Each concept is demonstrated through the exploration of three key texts. The first text addressed in this thesis is Aristotle’s Poetics and the realm of the “Mögliche” he founded within his argument. The second concept, the “Wirkliche”, was inspired by the German Sturm und Drang writer J.M.R. Lenz and his text Anmerkungen übers Theater. Oscar Wilde’s dialogue “The Decay of Lying” summarizes the third and final concept discussed within this thesis, the “Unmögliche”. His desire for art to be unreal represents the accumulation of German Romantic thought and Oriental influence on Western Art. Through the contexts of these three categories and their texts we can obtain a more accurate understanding of the foundations and possibilities of art.

If from God’s perspective ‘all the world’s a stage’, theology invites one to think and act according to the view afforded from this height. To speak theologically of a ‘world stage’ as many contemporary theologians have done has required rethinking the Church’s long-established antagonism towards the stage. Of late, theology has opened up academic exchange with the drama’s understanding of ‘the great theatre of the world’. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theo-drama in particular has given Christians a means for entering into discussion with dramatic forms. Contemporary theological engagements with ‘drama’, however, have been limited to its most literary/metaphorical aspects; less attention has been paid to the potentialities in theology’s exchange with the performance aesthetics of live theatre. Pressed to its logical ends, however, von Balthasar’s idea of a ‘theological dramatics’ and its advances made in contemporary theology, suggest the need for sustained engagement with other modes of dramaturgy, including performance theory and the stage. This thesis attempts to instantiate this theological engagement through the aesthetics of theatrical performance.