Download or read book W S Gilbert and the Context of Comedy written by Richard Moore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent is a great comic writer the product of his time? How far is he (or she) influenced by factors of personal psychology upbringing and environment? To what is the writing actually part of a long continuum in which there is continuity within change and change within continuity? The Progress of Fun considers principally the last of these areas, focussing on the case of W.S. Gilbert and challenging the frequently held view that he is pre-eminently a typical Victorian. This it does by tracing his roots back to Ancient Greek comedy and to the various comedic developments that have dominated Western Europe thereafter. Also included is a careful examination of the constraints and limitations that in various forms have long affected comedy-writing, and an evaluation of Gilbert’s particular skills and legacy within the on-going process. The whole is a suitable prelude to a second volume (Pipes and Tabors) which will consider Genre in W.S. Gilbert, again relating it to comedic precedents and the universally timeless within the particular.
Download or read book Genres and Provenance in the Comedy of W S Gilbert written by Richard Moore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Progress of Fun W.S. Gilbert was considered, not as a ‘classic Victorian’, but as part of an on-going comedic continuum stretching from Aristophanes to Joe Orton and beyond. Pipes and Tabors continues the story, covering the comedic experience differently by reference to genres. Here – treated in relation to a line of significant others – we discover how Gilbert responded to areas such as the Pastoral, the Irish drama, nautical scenarios, melodrama, sensation-theatre, the nonsensemode, pantomime spectaculars, fairy plays, and classical farce. Also included is a wider look at his relation to various European musical forms and (for instance) to the English line of wit and the Elizabethan pamphleteers. To consider a writer not so much by a study of individual works as by threads of linking generic modes tells us a great deal about cultural interconnections and the richly textured nature of theatrical experience. Pipes and Tabors offers a tapestry of overlapping genres and treatments, showing not just the design of the finished products but the shreds and patches which form the underside of the weave. According to Dorothy L. Sayers, life itself offers us the apparent loose ends of a design which will only be revealed from the front after death. In terms of Gilbertian comedy, we are privileged to be able to track both the effort of the weave and the skill of the finished product. On the way we will also discover some new links and sub-text implications about other 19th century denigrated groups which were buried from sight for too long.
Download or read book Aristophanic Humour written by Peter Swallow and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works. This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.
Download or read book American Musicals in Context written by Thomas A. Greenfield and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Musicals in Context: From the American Revolution to the 21st Century gives students a fresh look at history-based musicals, helping readers to understand the American story through one of the country's most celebrated art forms: the musical. With the hit musical Hamilton (2015) captivating audiences and reshaping the way early U.S. history is taught and written about, this book offers insight into an array of musicals that explore U.S. history. The work provides a synopsis, overview of critical and audience reception, and historical context and analysis for each of 20 musicals selected for the unique and illuminating way they present the American story on the stage. Specifically, this volume explores musicals that have centered their themes, characters, and plots on some aspect of America's complex and ever-changing history. Each in its own way helps us rediscover pivotal national crises, key political decisions, defining moral choices, unspeakable and unresolved injustices, important and untold stories, defeats suffered, victories won in the face of monumental adversity, and the sacrifices borne publicly and privately in the process of creating the American narrative, one story at a time. Students will come away from the volume armed with the critical thinking skills necessary to discern fact from fiction in U.S. history.
Download or read book Oscar Wilde in Context written by Kerry Powell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscar Wilde was a courageous individualist whose path-breaking life and work were shaped in the crucible of his time and place, deeply marked by the controversies of his era. This collection of concise and illuminating articles reveals the complex relationship between Wilde's work and ideas, and contemporary contexts including Victorian feminism, aestheticism and socialism. Chapters investigate how Wilde's writing was both a resistance to and quotation of Victorian master narratives and genre codes. From performance history to film and operatic adaptations, the ongoing influence and reception of Wilde's story and work is explored, proposing not one but many Oscar Wildes. To approach the meaning of Wilde as an artist and historical figure, the book emphasises not only his ability to imagine new worlds, but also his bond to the turbulent cultural and historical landscape around him - the context within which his life and art took shape.
Download or read book A Cultural History of Comedy in the Age of Empire written by Matthew Kaiser and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing together contributions from scholars in a range of fields within 19th- and 20th-century cultural, literary, and theater studies, this volume provides a thorough and varied overview of the many forms comedy took in the 19th century. Given the earth-shattering cultural changes and political events that mark the decades between 1800 and 1920-shifting borders, socioeconomic upheaval, scientific and technological innovation, the rise of consumerism and mass culture, unprecedented overseas expansion by European and American imperial powers-it is no wonder that people in the Age of Empire turned to comedy in order to make sense of the contradictions that structure modern identity and navigate the sociocultural fault lines within modern life. Comical, humorous, and satirical cultural artifacts from the period capture the anxieties and aspirations, the petty resentments and lofty ideals, of a world buffeted by change. This volume explores the aesthetic, political, and ethical dimensions of comedy in the context of blackface minstrelsy, nonsense poetry, music hall and pantomime, comic almanacs and joke books, journalism, silent film, popular novels, and hygiene magazines, among other phenomena. It also provides a detailed account of contentious debates among social Darwinists, psychoanalysts, and political philosophers about the meaning and significance of comedy and laughter to human life. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identity, the body, politics and power, laughter, and ethics. These eight divergent approaches to comedy in the Age of Empire add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.
Download or read book George Bernard Shaw in Context written by Brad Kent and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, the world lost one of its most well-known authors, a revolutionary who was as renowned for his personality as he was for his humour, humanity, and rebellious thinking. He remains a compelling figure who deserves attention not only for how influential he was in his time, but for how relevant he is to ours. This collection sets Shaw's life and achievements in context, with forty-two scholarly essays devoted to subjects that interested him and defined his work. Contributors explore a wide range of themes, moving from factors that were formative in Shaw's life, to the artistic work that made him most famous and the institutions with which he worked, to the political and social issues that consumed much of his attention, and, finally, to his influence and reception. Presenting fresh material and arguments, this collection will point to new directions of research for future scholars.
Download or read book Alfred Gilbert s Aestheticism written by Jason Edwards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alfred Gilbert's Aestheticism presents the first sustained re-evaluation of the life and work of one of the most acclaimed sculptors of the late-Victorian period. Drawing on important new archival sources, this ground-breaking study challenges the customary assumption that Aestheticism was primarily a literary, painterly or architectural phenomena. Jason Edwards reveals both the diverse ways in which Gilbert's sculptures operated within the context of Aestheticism and also how these works provided a unique and provocative commentary on the history of masculine friendship and eroticism in the period leading up to and beyond the Wilde trials in 1895. Detailed readings are offered of the relationship of Gilbert's work to essays by Pater and Swinburne, poems, plays, and novels by Wilde and W. S. Gilbert, and paintings by Burne-Jones, Leighton, Rossetti, Solomon, Whistler, and Watts. With over 90 illustrations, including key contemporary photographs showing Gilbert's works in their original contexts, this book makes a major contribution to the field of Victorian sculpture studies.
Download or read book Comedy of Manners written by David L. Hirst and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1979, this book traces comedy of manners from the 1660s to the then present — a scope beyond the traditional focus on the Restoration and early twentieth century. It uncovers an underestimated subversive potential and socially critical force in this particularly English dramatic form, emphasising the distinctive subjects and style that distinguish it from more general forms of witty social satire. The author discusses the major comic dramatists of the post-Restoration period; reassesses the significance of Sheridan, Wilde and Coward; and examines the continuation of the tradition in modern writers. This book will be of interest to students of English literature and drama.
Download or read book Gilbert and Sullivan written by Carolyn Williams and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, and how parody was used in the culture wars of late-nineteenth-century England.
Download or read book Pygmalion and Galatea written by Essaka Joshua and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title was published in 2001. Pygmalion and Galatea presents an account of the development of the Pygmalion story from its origins in early Greek myth until the twentieth century. It focuses on the use of the story in nineteenth-century British literature, exploring gender issues, the nature of artistic creativity and the morality of Greek art.
Download or read book Gilbert and Sullivan written by Carolyn Williams and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, and how parody was used in the culture wars of late-nineteenth-century England.
Download or read book Women in Context written by Barbara Kanner and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 1120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and versatile source for researchers in a broad range of disciplines, Women in Context is a biographical, analytical, and critical bibliography of narrative autobiographies written by over eight hundred women born in the United Kingdom and British territories from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth centuries. Each entry provides publication and catalog information, a brief biographical sketch, an analysis of the topical content, and a critical comment on style, tone, and purpose of the autobiography.
Download or read book Masterplots written by Frank Northen Magill and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical written by Robert Gordon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre from its origins, The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical offers both a historical account of musical theatre from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of key works and productions that illustrate its aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings.
Download or read book Reader s Guide to Music written by Murray Steib and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).
Download or read book Aesthetic Movement Satire A Dramatic Anthology written by John Hollingshead and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-27 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From long-haired 'Fleshly Poets' to intense, 'ultra pre-Raphaelite' artists, few stylistic movements in the history of art and literature have provoked the imagination and indignation of British playwrights as much as the Aesthetic Movement. During an intense and short-lived period from 1877 to 1881, the London stage saw fierce competition as playwrights and theatre managers raced to capture the zeitgeist, capitalizing on the unorthodox, eccentric and highly theatrical proponents of the Aesthetic Movement. The 'quite too utterly utter' Apostles of this new school were satirized to such an extent that the Illustrated London News (1881) complained that the London stage was 'thickly sown over with a crop of lilies and sunflowers', with 'aesthetes in every burlesque and comic opera produced'. This edited volume brings the four key plays satirizing the Aesthetic Movement together for the first time in an easily accessible format, allowing scholars and students to discover their secrets: The Grasshopper by John Hollingshead (Gaiety Theatre, 1877) Where's The Cat? by James Albery (Criterion, 1880) The Colonel by F.C. Burnand (Prince of Wales's Theatre, 1881) Patience by W.S. Gilbert (Opera Comique/Savoy, 1881) Including a brief introduction by Dr. Devon Cox, providing background and context to the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the British stage, and complete with biographical notes and an introduction to each play, Aesthetic Movement Satire: A Dramatic Anthology shines a light on this explosive flashpoint in British Theatre
