A hóember, aki találkozni akart a nappal

Author(s): Matei Vişniec / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2020

The puppet theatre play titled Omul de zăpadă care voia să se întâlnească cu soarele (The Snowman Who Wanted to Meet the Sun) has been translated into Hungarian for our journal by Ildikó Novák (with the translation of the poetry inserts by Csaba Fehér). The world premiere of the Hungarian version of the play has taken place at the Kövér Béla Puppet Theatre of Szeged, under the direction of Adela Moldovan, in 2019. The one-winter main character of Vişniec’s play goes on a long journey to meet the sun, to beg him not to let him melt. It is a journey of gaining knowledge and experiencing his own impermanence, during which the Snowman meets various animals and has to go through several trials. The play is, in a certain sense, also a charmingly beautiful and true initiation story, which overlaps with the always-current task of accepting one’s own disappearance. Vişniec’s text is a simultaneously sad and playful tale about friendship, devotion, and love, as well as about a disappearance that is rather a transformation and survival through the traces and gestures left behind in the lives of others.

A NOTE ON HOMER THE RAVEN

Author(s): Jovana Šijaković / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 56/2019

In the works of Clement of Alexandria pieces of Homeric verses surface from time to time as a testimony to a Christian truth or an interpretation of Scripture. Such instances in Gnostic writings presented evidence that these Gnostic writers treated Homer as their own prophet. It seems that in light of these accusations, Clement takes care to note that Homer did not understand the words he gave a voice to, any more than a raven does when he echoes what he hears. Furthermore, in all cases where Clement comes conspicuously close to implying a prophetic-like status for Homer, he does not fail to employ a phrase which explicitly divorces the poet from any theological authority.

A perspective on contemporary Croatian women’s playwriting awards for the play Marin Držić

Author(s): Iva Rosanda Žigo,Ivan Krznarić / Language(s): English / Issue: 14-15/2019

The authors present one of the ways that dramatic creativity is encouraged and promoted in the Republic of Croatia, namely the competition for the Marin Držić Award, which was introduced by the Croatian Ministry of Culture in 1991. The authors are particularly interested in the manner and extent to which women, that is, authors and playwrights, are represented in the arena of contemporary trends in national theatrical and dramatic creativity.

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Selected Persian Children’s Plays

Author(s): Zeinab Karimi,Bahee Hadaegh / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2020

Once theatre aims at children, who are the citizens and decision makers of the future, it can influence the course of society through the values and worldviews that it promotes. The exceptional capacity of this medium in engaging the audience, along with children’s receptiveness, necessitates a meticulous study of the ideologies embedded in plays. This study unravels how these ideological factors can hamper the theatre’s main purpose which is to encourage the audience to form individual fantasies. Accordingly, Žižek’s theories are drawn upon for their hints on ideology, fantasy, reality, and subjectivity. Taking his psychoanalytic views into account, four Persian plays are examined to determine what ideologies underlie these plays’ motifs and instructions, as well as what may justify their presence in plays. On close inspection, it becomes evident that these plays are loaded with conscious manipulative ideologies which are intended to train homogeneous social members rather than present objective glimpses of real life.

Anagnorisė Aristotelio Poetikoje: definicijos ir klasifikacijos problemos

Author(s): Jovita Dikmonienė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 3/2019

The article analyses the problems of meaning and classification of the term anagnorisis (ἀναγνώρισις) as it is defined in Aristotle’s Poetics. It focuses on how the term anagnorisis is understood and interpreted by scholars – different translations and their interpretations of the same type of anagnorisis are compared. The article also searches for the answers to the following questions: does the term of anagnorisis discussed by Aristotle mean the recognition of persons or just any kind of truth in a drama; why do some translators differentiate five and others six types of anagnorisis; what did Aristotle bear in mind by distinguishing the type of anagnorisis called “the recognition made by a poet himself” (Arist. Poet. XVI; 1454b 30–31), whereas it is known that all recognitions were created by poets themselves; does “an anagnorisis by false reasoning (a false syllogism)” occur among tragedy characters or does the audience at first misjudge, but later recognises the characters correctly? The author of the article argues that the version of the Arabic manuscript of Aristotle’s Poetics is more logical, as it states that one of the characters (θατέρου) rather than a spectator (θεάτρου) mistakenly recognises another character (Arist. Poet. XVI, 1455a 12–17). First of all, Aristotle does not state specifically that this is the fifth (different from all the others) way of recognition, but while discussing the fourth way of “anagnorisis by reasoning”, he adds that there is also and “an anagnorisis by false reasoning (a false syllogism)” (Arist. Poet. XVI, 1455a 12–13). Secondly, the recognitions described by Aristotle in Part XVI of Poetics occur between two characters, when one has to recognise the other. Therefore, the author of the article does not agree with the opinion by Dana Munteanu (2002) – that in Menander’s comedy Epitrepontes, Smikrine’s false recognition should be referred to as an erroneous spectator’s recognition, whereas at the end of the play Menander depicts Smikrine as a misled spectator just observing the events uninvolved without understanding them properly. By such leaving the word “spectator” in Aristotle’s classification of the fifth type of anagnorisis and using it for a character observing the actions of the play uninvolved, an ambiguity occurs, as Aristotle himself in his Poetics speaks many times about an actual spectator of the tragedy, who while watching the action of the play experiences fear and pity. The author of the article thinks that the translation of chapter XVI of Aristotle’s Poetics by Marcelinas Ročka (1990) should be corrected in some places. At the fifth “recognition by false reasoning”, a note in square brackets stating that this is the last recognition should be omitted. In fact, it is the next-to-last recognition discussed by Aristotle. In translation “the recognitions invented by the poet himself”, some other word can be used, as Aristotle here has in mind that poets usually write poorly and use trite recognitions. A phrase “to contrive” (in Lithuanian “sukurpti”) could be used here instead, as it means “to make or put together roughly or hastily”. It is also true speaking of the translation that a character of the play rather than the audience recognises another character by false reasoning. Finally, the author of the article draws a conclusion that according to Aristotle an anagnorisis is the recognition of persons occurring among characters of the play. In Aristotle’s Poetics, six variants of anagnorisis are distinguished and their classification made based on the principle of artistry and the originality of its use in plays.

Az ember, aki magában beszél

Author(s): Matei Vișniec / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 798/2020

Short play by Matei Vișniec translated by Zsolt Karácsonyi.

BETON - Kulturno propagandni komplet br. 157, god. X, Beograd, utorak, 17. mart 2015.

Author(s): Vlad Zografi,Đura Miočinović,Joana Prvulesku,Katalin Gomboš,Adrian Zalmora,Elena-Gabrijela Lazara,Radu Vanku,Leticija Ilea / Language(s): Serbian / Publication Year: 2015

UVODNA REČ, Đura Miočinović: Terorizam sa raskrsnice; Joana Prvulesku: NEDELJA, 28. DECEMBAR; Vlad Zografi: POLJUBI ME!; Katalin Gomboš: SKICE; POEZIJA: Radu Vanku, Adrijan Zalmora, Elena-Gabrijela Lazara, Leticija Ilea

Between Karel Čapek and a Hard Brexit. Reflections on Robotics and Humanity

Author(s): Derek Sayer / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Karel Čapek introduced the word robot to the languages of the world in his drama R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), which premiered on 25 January 1921 at the National Theater in Prague. The word itself was coined by Karel’s older brother Josef, a cubist painter who created the stage-sets for the play. Etymology indelibly links robots with unfree labor, since robot comes from robota, the Czech word for the labor services Bohemian peasants owed their lords until 1848, when servile tenancies were abolished. A robot, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “a machine with a human appearance or functioning like a human,” but the term has also come to be used inversely, to describe “a person who works mechanically and efficiently but insensitively.” [...]

Cătălina Iliescu-Gheorghiu: a polysystemic model for the comparative analysis of drama from the perspective of descriptive translation studies

Author(s): Mona Arhire / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

This review presents a recently published book authored by Cătălina Iliescu Gheorghiu, an academic actively involved in Romanian studies and a translator of Romanian literature. As the title suggests, it is a study that falls under the scope of Descriptive Translation Studies implying the polysystemic model posited by Lambert and Van Gorp for the comparative analysis of drama. The corpus under scrutiny is made up utterances extracted from the play A treia țeapă (The Third Stake) by Marin Sorescu and the corresponding utterances from two of its translations into English. The analytical part is backed up by a solid theoretical framework with its latter section lending the overall structure of the analysis. The categories subject to investigation are (i) preliminary data, (ii) the macro-level structures, (iii) the micro-level structures and (iv) the systemic context. The methodology experimented with drama translation and the findings deriving from it have proved their validity and are valuable input for other similar and possibly more comprising research that can use these findings as hypotheses to be tested further.

Commonplace Book Compilationand Early Modern Reading: The Case of Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden

Author(s): Tianhu Hao / Language(s): English / Issue: 8/2019

Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden is a 17th-century manuscript commonplace book compiled by John Evans, now collected mainly at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. The commonplace book has been known primarily for its Shakespearean connections. Borrowing Gunnar Sorelius’s useful term “spontaneous editing,” I discuss it as a way of reading. According to Robert Darnton, the early modern segmental reading contrasts with the modern sequential reading. I maintain that the commonplace book compilation process, as can be inferred from the extant manuscripts, offers an intimate peep into a particular type of early modern reading practice. Hopefully a detailed analysis of the reading activities of John Evans can add to our understanding of the nature of early modern reading, especially commonplace reading. I argue that the defining features of commonplace reading include the fluidity of the text, the subjectivity of the reader, and the multiplicity of the authorial intention.

Contemporary Drama and Theatre in Estonia. Conversing with Drama Directors Lembit Peterson, Tiit Palu and Ivar Põllu

Author(s): Chen Dahong,Jüri Talvet,Lembit Peterson,Tiit Palu,Ivar Põllu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

We may add that conscious Estonian culture as creativity in all branches of arts can be traced back only to the middle of the 19th century when the country’s predominantly peasant population was finally emancipated from the humiliating condition of serfdom, imposed by Baltic-German landlords since the late Middle Ages (and maintained since the start of the 18th century with the benediction of Tsarist Russia) In the following interview, we will ask some of the leading Estonian stage directors to share their experience and ideas about the past and contemporary state of Estonian theatre life and drama performances. [...]

Criticism of Colonialism in George Bernard Shaw’s Play “John Bull’s Other Island”

Author(s): Biljana R. Vlašković Ilić / Language(s): English / Issue: 5/2012

Conveniently titled after a cartoon character, George Bernard Shaw’s play John Bull’s Other Island sneers at the legacy of colonialism, intolerance, and paternalism. This paper analyzes Mr. Shaw’s attempt to ‘reconcile’ England and Ireland in order to achieve synthesis between the colonizer and the colonized. It also answers whether it is possible to overcome the hostility caused by colonialism, and whether humanity can avoid and disregard the most important feature of colonial discourse Homi Bhabha wrote about: namely, “its dependence on the concept of ‘fixity’ in the ideological construction of otherness”. Finally, the reading of John Bull’s Other Island as the sovereign critique of colonialism exposes G. B. Shaw’s practical artistic solutions to stifling the symbolic and cultural violence, which continues long after the colonizers have granted the colony the right to Home Rule.

Crossing the Divide between Christianity and Islam: Representations of Religious Conversion in Three Seventeenth-Century English Plays

Author(s): Ludmilla Kostova / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

This article focuses on three English plays, The Renegado, or the Gentleman of Venice (1624) by Philip Massinger, The Tragedy of Mustapha, Son of Solyman the Magnificent (1665) by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, and The Siege of Constantinople (1675) by Henry Neville Payne, which were written at a time when the illdefined entity generally known as “the West” today was not in the ascendant and apprehensions of the expansionist Ottoman Empire and its dependencies in North Africa played an important role in European social and political life. The plays are approached from a historicist perspective as attention focuses on anxieties aroused by the early modern European perception of Islam as an alien religion that nevertheless attracted Christians and incited them to convert. Representations of religious conversion are also analysed in terms of gender differences. In addition, each of the plays is read as a response to a particular set of social and political problems, which troubled early modern England and were re-imagined through dramatized stories of encounters between Muslims and Christians.

Cultural Intertexts

Frequency: 1 issues / Country: Romania

Culture generates an infinity of signs, whose meanings are shaped in and communicated via texts which, in turn, carry traces of other texts. These dialogic palimpsests which encode representations and allow for a multitude of possible readings ask for interpretative efforts, a part of which are included in Cultural Intertexts.

Drama oder Roman. Literatur im Brennpunkt intellektueller Existenz bei Georg Lukács

Author(s): Christa Karpenstein-Eßbach / Language(s): German / Issue: 29/2020

The meaning and problematic of ›form‹ in Lukács, most of all in his early writings, unfolds in three ways. Essayism is understood as an intellectual action that responds to a modernity perceived as difficult (1). Literary modes of speech and representation are an expression of life that has become form and connected with their own interpretations of the world qua form, as they gain their contours in drama and the novel and are linked with respective signatures of the philosophy of history within the framework of an unfinished modernity (2). The ascent to form which Lukács carries out in three steps – drama, novel, essay – is finally related to and contrasted with the thought impulses of postmodernism (3).

DramArt.Revistă de studii teatrale

Frequency: 1 issues / Country: Romania

DramArt Journal of Theatre Studies

The Journal for Theatre Studies DramArt was founded at the beginning of the year 2012 as a yearly academic issue.

DramArt offers a plattform with a wide discussion spectrum for academics, theatre scientists, theatre practicioners and theatre pedagogues. Romanian and foreign personalities concerned with media, theatre and film topics are invited to debate on theoretical and practical aspects.

Profile of the journal:

The journal comprises the following sections:

1.Studies and articles (studies on specific subjects, results of individual and collective research, essays based on the given topics of the issue)

2. Workshop, interviews, translations (new dramatic texts, translations, interviews with personalities from the domain of performing arts)

3. Theatrical Reviews, book reviews (theatrical reviews of recent productions, book reviews of recent publications on perfroming arts) 

Dramska predstava: "Korak do Bosne"

Author(s): Nada Đurevska / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: II/2020

Theatrical play by Nada Đurđevska (writer) and was directed by Anela Križanac.

Editorial Foreword

Author(s): Silviu-Marian Miloiu / Language(s): English,Romanian / Issue: 2/2020

The second issue of volume 12 of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies continues to reflect the academic discussions occasioned by the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies of May 2020. Prof. Radu Carp was one of the keynote speakers of the conference and his address on Combining soft power with the geopolitical approach - how difficult is it for the EU to change its attitude? elicited a great interest among the presenters and attenders of the scientific event. As in any such scholarly event, especially an international gathering with a critical focus on the construction/reconstruction of Europe in vital moments of its past and recent past aspirations, the viewpoints of the participants, including the analysis of Prof. Carp on the current challenges of the EU are passed on to the wider community of fellow researchers, the public and decision-makers. The call for stepping up to a new level of integration and geopolitical power projection is dissected both in its soft and hard power dimension without eschewing the focus on democracy, climate change mitigation measures or cybersecurity.

Endgame: A Series of Endings

Author(s): Sara Setayesh / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2013

Samuel Beckett's popular play Endgame, depicts a prison-like room with two windows that show a dead universe and a "corpsed world". Throughout his play, Beckett uses ideas, symbols, objects, and actions that reflect an ending. In Endgame the characters cannot choose; it seems that everything is coming to an end and they can do nothing about it; they have to accept it. The play's world is devoid of meaning, warmth, humor and all beautiful things. In most of his works Beckett shows that human faculties are deteriorating and Endgame is no exception. Hamm and Clov are not mobile; Hamm cannot stand and Clov just moves in a limited way. Nagg and Nell are confined in a dustbin totally without action and mobility. Hamm's chronicle is an unfinished one and one can generalize it to all Beckett's works as they avoid closure. In fact the play starts from the point where it's "nearly finished" and it ends the same.

Expressions de la faute dans la dramaturgie de Georges Darien

Author(s): Aurélien Lorig / Language(s): French / Issue: 22/2018

Pour Georges Darien, auteur de la Belle Époque, le thème de la faute est récurrent dans sa dramaturgie. Religieuse ou morale, la faute dévoile la réalité d’une petite bourgeoisie factice. La variété des approches de la faute, renforcée par l’intertexte avec Zola et Mirbeau, laisse en définitive entrevoir le point de vue de Darien sur le sujet, lequel est emblématique de la littérature fin de siècle. For Georges Darien, a Belle Epoque author, the fault as subject is very important and appears frequently in his theatre. Religious or moral, the fault allows to show the portrayal of a phoney middle class bourgeoisie. The variety of approaches to the fault, confirmed by Zola and Mirbeau intertexts, allows to catch Darien’s point of view which is emblematic of fin de siècle literature.