Edward Albee's concern with the illusions people use to escape the external facts of their lives has prompted the emphasis on games in his plays. His use of such games, as well as the word "game" itself, presupposes an interest in game-playing concepts which has become increasingly obvious over the past ten years. Such concepts emphasize both the necessity of illusions in constructing and dealing with life and the necessity for awareness of such illusions if they are to be creatively managed. Albee extends these ideas in his plays both through the characters' game-playing and the structure of the plays themselves. By drawing attention to the dramatic illusion, Albee utilizes the play as a game and illustrates the significance that an awareness of illusion can achieve. At the same time, he extends the characters' game-playing into the dramatic structure, demonstrating his tacit understanding of the relationship between form and content in a work of art. Chapter One outlines the game-playing concepts that are the backbone of Albee's plays and discusses the ways by which Albee extends these concepts into the play-form itself. Basic to the audience's awareness of the dramatic illusion is its intermittent alienation from it. Such alienation is facilitated by Albee's deliberate confusion of theatrical conventions which prevents the audience from relegating his plays to any definite dramatic tradition. Chapter Two examines four of Albee's one-act plays: The Sandbox, The American Dream, The Death of Bessie Smith, and The Zoo Story. In The Sandbox and The American Dream, the characters' game-playing receives its most exaggerated treatment: correspondingly, these plays represent Albee's most obvious use of the play as a game. In The Death of Bessie Smith, the manipulation of the theatrical experience is not as important as the development of the Nurse as the first of Albee's neurotic females. The Nurse's inability to use games to escape successfully from her frustration with life provides the play with its dramatic centre and makes an important point about game-playing: awareness of games and illusion must at times be overcome if games are to provide real management of life. This theme is further developed in The Zoo Story in which Jerry's attack on Peter's illusions about life serve to illustrate his own inability to communicate. In Chapter Three, the games George and Martha play with themselves and their guests in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are analyzed as a means of comprehending more fully Albee's prerequisites for individual and social survival. The criticism of the "American Scene" that Albee begins in The Sandbox and The American Dream is here more fully developed, the family continuing as his basic metaphor for contemporary American society. The play represents Albee's most complex use of the play as a game, the set and dialogue providing a naturalistic foil for the "interruptive" techniques borrowed from other dramatic traditions. Finally, Chapter Four deals with A Delicate Balance, Albee's most recent full-length, play, excluding his adaptations. Although game-playing is not as marked in this play as in the earlier ones, it still is central to the characters' illusions about family and friendship and to the play's overall structure. Moreover, the "balance" that Agnes maintains between awareness of her illusions and abandonment to them suggests a resolution to the problems surrounding game-playing that Albee probes in his earlier work. Such a resolution demands an awareness of illusion and a management of games so that they may best serve the game-player. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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O presente trabalho explora a questão da interdisciplinaridade e da transposição de obras literárias para o cinema. Focalizando a adaptação de textos dramáticos ao cinema, o estudo propõe em um primeiro momento uma investigação teórica sobre gênero ficcional mimético; drama, a partir da perspectiva do jogo dramático como elemento construtor do metadrama implícito e explícito; transtextualidade e cinema. Num segundo momento, a investigação analisa dois textos dramáticos, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? , de Edward Albee, e Closer , de Patrick Marber, e suas respectivas transposições para o cinema pelo diretor Mike Nichols, examinando os elementos e recursos que os autores utilizam para construir o jogo dramático. Posteriormente, realizase uma análise comparativa entre os textos dramáticos e entre suas adaptações cinematográficas, buscando pontos de contato e de afastamento entre as obras, priorizando elementos denotadores do jogo dramático, além de características transtextuais que possibilitam a manutenção ou a alteração de significados entre os textos dramáticos e seus respectivos filmes. / This paper explores interdisciplinary aspects related to the transposition of dramatic texts into films. First, a theoretical investigation is conducted on mimetic genre, transtextuality; on drama, from the point of view of the game as a dramatic element to build implicit and explicit metadrama, and film adaptation. Secondly, this dissertation analyzes two plays, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? , by Edward Albee, and Closer , by Patrick Marber, as well as their film adaptations by director Mike Nichols, and examines the elements and features that the authors use to create the dramatic games. Later, the plays and their film adaptations are contrasted in order to investigate elements of dramatic games, and transtextual characteristics that allow the maintenance or the alteration of meaning between the plays and their correspondent films.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-04-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:26:25Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 leite_al_me_arafcl.pdf: 864986 bytes, checksum: 0067c970ef9b685707a6e900dd9a6ce9 (MD5) / A obra de arte dramática, diferentemente de outras formas artístico-literárias, é a que de forma mais prática e imediata estabelece uma relação entre seu realizador e o público ao qual ela é destinada. Contudo, o drama moderno, produzido a partir do final do século XIX, passou por uma série de crises e adaptações quanto à forma e ao conteúdo, decorrentes de várias mudanças ocorridas nos mais diversos setores da sociedade. Edward Albee é um dos maiores dramaturgos norte-americanos da segunda metade do séc. XX. Seguindo uma tradição que produziria grandes talentos como Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams e Arthur Miller, o novo autor surge em 1958 com seu texto, The Zoo Story, associado ao Teatro do Absurdo. A peça de forma minimalista põe em cena dois bancos de praça e duas personagens: Peter que é a própria personificação do self made man, já que está enjaulado aos ideais e aos valores burgueses de vida, e Jerry o outsider ou o transeunte permanente que não se insere nos padrões, no código moral e de valores socialmente estabelecidos. Entretanto, ou por isso mesmo, possui uma capacidade reflexiva extremamente aguçada. O objetivo é tratar de um aspecto da peça - a questão da absurvidade e da liberdade, como formas de transcender a angústia existencial e a vida sem significado em um contexto destituído de símbolos metafísicos. Analisar-se-ão os elementos relacionados a estes tópicos bem como o modo que servem de instrumento para o esvaziamento da ideologia burguesa, que culmina na crítica ácida que Edward Albee desfere ao American way of life. / Dramatic art, differently from other literacy-artistic forms, is the one that most practically and immediately establishes a relationship between its producer and the audience it is created for. However, modern drama, produced since the end of nineteenth century, has gone through many crises and adaptations in its form and content, originated from many changes occured in the various instances of society. Edward Albee is one of the major American playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century. Following a tradition which produced gifted authors such as Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, the new author appears with his play The Zoo Story in 1958, associated to the Theater of the Absurd. The play, in a minimalist way, stages two park benches and two characters: Peter, the personification of the self made man, encaged in the bourgeois ideals and values of life; and Jerry, the outsider or the permanent transient who does not fill in the patterns, in the moral code or the established social values. However, or because of this, he has a sharpened reflexive ability. The aim of our search is to treat one aspect of the play - absurdity and freedom - a means of transceding existential anguish and life without meaning in a context deprived of metaphysical symbols. We intend to analyze elements related to these topics, as well as the way they function as instruments for the emptying bourgeois ideology which, ends up the sour criticism Albee aims at the American way of life.

O presente trabalho explora a questão da interdisciplinaridade e da transposição de obras literárias para o cinema. Focalizando a adaptação de textos dramáticos ao cinema, o estudo propõe em um primeiro momento uma investigação teórica sobre gênero ficcional mimético; drama, a partir da perspectiva do jogo dramático como elemento construtor do metadrama implícito e explícito; transtextualidade e cinema. Num segundo momento, a investigação analisa dois textos dramáticos, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? , de Edward Albee, e Closer , de Patrick Marber, e suas respectivas transposições para o cinema pelo diretor Mike Nichols, examinando os elementos e recursos que os autores utilizam para construir o jogo dramático. Posteriormente, realizase uma análise comparativa entre os textos dramáticos e entre suas adaptações cinematográficas, buscando pontos de contato e de afastamento entre as obras, priorizando elementos denotadores do jogo dramático, além de características transtextuais que possibilitam a manutenção ou a alteração de significados entre os textos dramáticos e seus respectivos filmes. / This paper explores interdisciplinary aspects related to the transposition of dramatic texts into films. First, a theoretical investigation is conducted on mimetic genre, transtextuality; on drama, from the point of view of the game as a dramatic element to build implicit and explicit metadrama, and film adaptation. Secondly, this dissertation analyzes two plays, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? , by Edward Albee, and Closer , by Patrick Marber, as well as their film adaptations by director Mike Nichols, and examines the elements and features that the authors use to create the dramatic games. Later, the plays and their film adaptations are contrasted in order to investigate elements of dramatic games, and transtextual characteristics that allow the maintenance or the alteration of meaning between the plays and their correspondent films.

O presente trabalho explora a questão da interdisciplinaridade e da transposição de obras literárias para o cinema. Focalizando a adaptação de textos dramáticos ao cinema, o estudo propõe em um primeiro momento uma investigação teórica sobre gênero ficcional mimético; drama, a partir da perspectiva do jogo dramático como elemento construtor do metadrama implícito e explícito; transtextualidade e cinema. Num segundo momento, a investigação analisa dois textos dramáticos, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? , de Edward Albee, e Closer , de Patrick Marber, e suas respectivas transposições para o cinema pelo diretor Mike Nichols, examinando os elementos e recursos que os autores utilizam para construir o jogo dramático. Posteriormente, realizase uma análise comparativa entre os textos dramáticos e entre suas adaptações cinematográficas, buscando pontos de contato e de afastamento entre as obras, priorizando elementos denotadores do jogo dramático, além de características transtextuais que possibilitam a manutenção ou a alteração de significados entre os textos dramáticos e seus respectivos filmes. / This paper explores interdisciplinary aspects related to the transposition of dramatic texts into films. First, a theoretical investigation is conducted on mimetic genre, transtextuality; on drama, from the point of view of the game as a dramatic element to build implicit and explicit metadrama, and film adaptation. Secondly, this dissertation analyzes two plays, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? , by Edward Albee, and Closer , by Patrick Marber, as well as their film adaptations by director Mike Nichols, and examines the elements and features that the authors use to create the dramatic games. Later, the plays and their film adaptations are contrasted in order to investigate elements of dramatic games, and transtextual characteristics that allow the maintenance or the alteration of meaning between the plays and their correspondent films.

Orientador: Eric Mitchell Sabinson / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-24T09:24:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Santana_EstherMarinho_M.pdf: 1164656 bytes, checksum: 9d5b6222693152234eb1dcde8e765daa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Considerado um dos títulos mais controversos e enigmáticos do teatro moderno norte-americano, Tiny Alice (1964-5) traz a jornada do lay brother Julian do início de seu envolvimento com Miss Alice, uma benfeitora que doará milhões para a Igreja Católica, até sua morte, um sacrifício à divindade Alice. Escrutinando as configurações da linguagem verbal e dos elementos simbólicos da peça, o presente trabalho propõe como motivos centrais da obra a demonstração da limitação da palavra para pavimentar a metafísica e a exposição da artificialidade irreversível das crenças religiosas. A despeito do tratamento questionador conferido ao verbo, retratado, pois, como ambíguo, ineficiente e falseador, Tiny Alice não o desacredita e nem tampouco o invalida como mecanismo de representação ou avaliação. Ao contrário, termina por afirmar seu poder elucidador. Em via análoga, embora sugira a impossibilidade da transcendência final dos microcosmos, permite que Julian, impulsionado pela verborragia, chegue ao macrocosmo. A investigação analisa também as personagens e suas motivações e movimentos para além do âmbito da palavra, segundo intertextualidades com sujeitos e circunstâncias de outras obras do cânone albeeano, tais como The Zoo Story (1959-60), Who¿s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), Box / Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968) e The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983). Por fim, confere importância fundamental ao monólogo final de Julian, não raro compreendido pela crítica como ilógico e absurdo. Conquanto repleto de autorreferencialidades instáveis, menções a eventos de temporalidades díspares, interlocutores distintos e empréstimos literários diversos, tal discurso é compreendido pelo estudo como plenamente coerente, revelador e eficiente na transmissão da argumentação geral da peça, e, ainda, na celebração do ofício literário / Abstract: Reputed as one of the most controversial and enigmatic works in modern North American theatre, Tiny Alice (1964-5) comprises lay brother Julian¿s journey from the beginning of his involvement with Miss Alice, a benefactor who will donate millions to the Catholic Church, to his death as a sacrifice to the divinity Alice. By examining both linguistic and symbolic configurations of the play, this study identifies as its central motives the demonstration of verbal language¿s restrictiveness to command metaphysics, and the exposure of religious beliefs¿ irrevocable artificiality. Notwithstanding the critical treatment consecrated to the linguistic system, depicted as ambiguous, inefficient and delusory, Tiny Alice neither discredits nor invalidates it as a mechanism for analysis and representation. In fact, the play affirms the clarifying power of verbal language. Similarly, although postulating the impossibility of transcendence in microcosms, it allows Julian to reach the macrocosm propelled by verbosity. This investigation also examines the characters and their motivations and actions outside the linguistic domain, according to intertextualities between the play and other titles from the albeean canon, such as The Zoo Story (1959-60), Who¿s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), Box / Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (1968) and The Man Who Had Three Arms (1983). Finally, it dedicates utmost importance to Julian¿s final monologue, frequently labeled as ilogical and absurd by critics. Replete with unstable self-reference, mentions of events based on dissimilar temporalities, different interlocutors and several literary borrowings, the final speech is nevertheless considered by the study as entirely coherent, revealing and efficient in showing the overall significance of the play, as well as in celebrating literary craft / Mestrado / Teoria e Critica Literaria / Mestra em Teoria e História Literária