No description available.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

No description available.

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the Stoic influences in the Jacobean drama. Although the Stoic figure and references to Stoicism appear frequently in this drama, there has never been a comprehensive study of the Stoic element in the drama of this period. This study will fill this scholastic gap.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1962. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 263-267).

This paper discusses the publications of the Tatler and the Spectator and their influences and criticisms of local theater, actors and audiences.

La tesi indaga l'interazione tra genere drammatico e poetico nei primi anni di attività del poeta inglese W.H. Auden, e procede esaminando i drammi maggiori scritti durante gli anni trenta. Si sofferma su un'opera in particolare, The Ascent of F6, confrontanto la dimensione testuale con quella spettacolare, analizzando il copione originale dello spettacolo usato per la prima del 26 febbraio 1937 e la ricezione della critica. La dissertazione approfondisce il legame tra i due generi letterari soprattutto considerando la coerenza concettuale e di immagini che contraddistingue il pensiero audeniano, e mette in evidenza l'evoluzione della scrittura drammatica seguita in senso cronologico, dalla stesura della prima opera Paid on Both Sides nel 1928, al primo successo con la compagnia londinese del Group Theatre, The Dog Beneath the Skin nel 1935, fino all'ultimo successo nel 1937 scritto in collaborazione con Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6, che segnò il progressivo abbandono del genere drammatico da parte dell'autore. La tesi dà un'amplia prospettiva d'esame considerando non solo la dimensione testuale e indagando il rapporto del testo con il genere tragico, ma evidenziando anche i molteplici rimandi intertestuali e considerando l'efficacia del testo in termini drammatici, ricostruendo lo spettacolo attraverso l'analisi di materiale inedito. / The present study investigates the interplay between poetry and drama in the early works of W.H. Auden, and proceeds in analysing the major plays composed during the 1930s. It focuses on a drama in particular, The Ascent of F6, comparing the textual aspect with the performance outcome, examining the original script used for the premiére on February 26, 1937 and also the response of the critic. The dissertation deepens the connection between poetry and drama considering the conceptual coherence and the unity of images that mark the thought of Auden in the early 30s. Auden's most important dramas are examined following a chronological perspective, from the first draft of Paid on Both Sides, in 1928, to the first success staged by the Group Theatre of London, The Dog Beneath the Skin, 1935, and eventually the last achievement in 1937 written with Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6, which marked the progressive abandonment of the dramatic genre by Auden. The thesis gives an extensive outlook which considers not just the textual aspects of the play, investigating thus the connections with the classic tragedy, but also underlines the various intertextual references and the efficacy of the text in its performing aspects.

Paradoxal, le rire de l’horreur constitue cependant une donnée majeure de l’expérience théâtrale contemporaine. Il procède d’une mutation du comique qui en vient à exprimer la violence au lieu de l’édulcorer. Sur la scène anglaise d’après l’abolition de la censure (1968), le comique se fait miroir des angoisses de la société et l’horreur, mise en scène de façon de plus en plus naturaliste, fait rire le public tout en suscitant un profond malaise qui interroge la position du spectateur. Mais, dans un mouvement inverse et encore plus dérangeant parce qu’insidieux, l’humour se fait aussi vecteur d’effroi quand l’horreur est tue ou euphémisée, renvoyant alors au public une interrogation profondément éthique sur l’humanité de son rire. Ces mutations esthétiques s’insèrent dans une profonde déstabilisation de la nature même de la comédie et de son idéologie optimiste et humaniste : si certains sous-genres (la farce, la comedy of manners, la city comedy, la parodie) représentent volontiers des situations horribles, la comédie est structurellement défigurée quand elle incorpore une ontologie horrible, quand sa forme n’implique plus le progrès mais l’arbitraire et quand son dénouement se fait explicitement dissonant. L’horreur, défigurant de manière ludique la forme de la comédie, devient un principe poétique qui renouvelle le genre, et en particulier les archétypes comiques inoffensifs pour les rendre terribles. Car c’est à l’aune de la tragédie défaillante que se refonde la comédie et le rire s’y étouffe, lesté d’une conscience du tragique soulignée par la culpabilité inhérente à de nombreux éclats de rire, mais surtout par la dérision des valeurs tragiques et la relativisation de l’absolu dans l’humour. Dans ces conditions, le rire devient un moyen d’accéder à la puissance des émotions tragiques, et la catharsis se redéfinit, s’éloignant de la traditionnelle purification des passions pour devenir une réintensification de leur pouvoir humanisant. / Paradoxical as it may be, laughing at horror is a major feature of the contemporary theatrical experience. It emerges from a shift in the comic mode which now expresses violence instead of muffling it. In the aftermath of the abolition of censorship in the United Kingdom (1968), this comic mode has held a mirror up to society’s fears and horror has been staged in a more and more naturalistic way, so as to make the audience laugh while unsettling them, questioning the very position of the spectators. However, in a converse and even more disturbing way, humour has become a way to appal them, subduing horror instead of underlining it and thereby deeply questioning them on the humanity of laughter. Those aesthetic shifts take part in a general process of undermining comedy’s humanistic optimistic ideology; even though some subgenres (namely farce, city comedy, comedy of manners or parody) easily stage horrible scenes, comedy is structurally defaced when it includes an ontology of horror, when its shape does not express progress but arbitrariness and when its ending is explicitly unhappy. Playing on the structure of comedy to the point of defacing it, horror becomes a poetic principle that renews the genre and especially the comic archetypes, making them dreadful instead of harmless. It is indeed tragedy’s failure that becomes the measure of this renewal of comedy, as laughter gets stifled by the tragic consciousness that tinges many laughs with guilt, caused by the way tragic values are ridiculed and tragic absoluteness belittled by humour. In those conditions, laughing turns into a means for the spectator to surreptitiously feel the power of tragic emotions; the experience redefines catharsis, no longer a purification of emotions but a new way to reach their humanising power.

Hamlet's tragedy is constructed as a perspective of matter that is destined for decay, and this "objective," or "object-focused," mode of viewing the material world enhances theatrical and theological understandings of the play's props, figurative language, and characters. Hamlet's "objective mode" evokes early modern materialist philosophies of vanitas and memento mori, and it is communicated in theatre through semiotic means, whereby material items stand for moral ideas according to an established sign-signified relation. Extending an objective reading to Hamlet's characters reveals their function as images, or two-dimensional emblems, in moments of slowing narrative time. In the graveyard scene (5.1), characters and theatrical props cooperate to materialize the objective perspective. As a prop, Ophelia's corpse complicates the objective mode through its semantic complexity. Thus, she stands apart from other characters as one that both serves to construct and to deconstruct the objective mode. Hamlet's tragic outlook, which depends upon an understanding of matter as destined for decay, and of material items as ends in themselves rather than vehicles for spiritual transformation, is an early modern notion concurrent with theological debates surrounding the Eucharist. Drawing upon art-historical, linguistic, feminist, theological, and theatrical approaches, this thesis contributes to concurrent discourse on Hamlet's tragic genre.