Dramatic Action of Satire and Disclosure in Aristophanes’ Wasps

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
Jae kook Ryu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Dramatic Action

Music of Tragedy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi A. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Instrumental Accompaniment ◽  
And Performance

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Drawing on the ancient conception of mousikē, in which words, song, dance, and instrumental accompaniment were closely linked, Naomi Weiss emphasizes the interplay of performance and imagination—the connection between the chorus’s own live singing and dancing in the theater and the images of music-making that frequently appear in their songs. Through detailed readings of four plays, she argues that the mousikē referred to and imagined in these plays is central to the progression of the dramatic action and to ancient audiences’ experiences of tragedy itself. She situates Euripides’s experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousikē within a broader cultural context, and in doing so, she shows how he both continues the practices of his tragic predecessors and also departs from them, reinventing traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage.

“Our eyes are sentinels unto our judgments”: Embodied Perception in The Changeling

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
M. Burdick Smith
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Thomas Middleton ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Embodied Perception ◽  
Perceptual Theory ◽  
Dramatic Action

This essay argues that Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling (1622) draws on debates about sense perception in the period to interrogate the effects of dramatic representation. After a brief overview of early modern perceptual theory, this essay demonstrates that the play's villain, De Flores, manipulates other characters’ perception through language. In fact, De Flores uses theatrical language to manipulate how other characters perceive their environment, indicating the theater's ability to manipulate audiences. By affecting how characters perceive, De Flores affects other characters’ ability to process and react to their environment, which impedes their judgment. The essay argues that much of The Changeling's dramatic action unfolds through a conflict between two models of perception—presentational and representational—that undergird much of the play's dramatic conflict. In the play, pervasive anxiety about judgment, particularly how perception affects judgment, is structured around the distinction between these two models of perception. Considering the play alongside representational and presentational models indicates how early modern dramatists engage with intellectual theories to consider how representation works and how spaces are experienced. In this way, the theater refracts and dramatizes theories about perception.

Voices of Spectators and Audience Power

Pólemos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Biet
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationship ◽  
The Other ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Way

AbstractTheatre and law are not so different. Generally, researchers work on the art of theatre, the rhetoric of the actors, or the dramaturgy built from law cases or from the questions that the law does not completely resolve. Trials, tragedies, even comedies are close: everybody can see the interpenetration of them on stage and in the courts. We know that, and we know that the dramas are made with/from/of law, we know that the art the actors are developing is not so far from the art of the lawyers, and conversely. In this paper, I would like to have a look at the action of the audience, at the session itself and at the way the spectators are here to evaluate and judge not only the dramatic action, not only the art of the actors, not only the text of the author, but also the other spectators, and themselves too. In particular, I will focus on the “common judgment” of the audience and on its judicial, aesthetic and social relationship. The spectators have been undisciplined, noisy, unruled, during such a long period that theatre still retains some prints of this behaviour, even if nowadays, the social and aesthetic rule is to be silent. But uncertainty, inattention, distraction, contradiction, heterogeneity are the notions which characterise the session, and the judgments of the spectators still depend on them. So, what was and what is the voice of the audience? And with what sort of voice do spectators give their judgments?

scholarly journals A Study of Dramatic Action and Emotion Using a Systematic Scan of Stick Figure Configurations

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noa Raindel ◽  
Yuvalal Liron ◽  
Uri Alon
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Upper Body ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Body Postures ◽  
Stick Figure ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Action Verbs

Comprehending the meaning of body postures is essential for social organisms such as humans. For example, it is important to understand at a glance whether two people seen at a distance are in a friendly or conflictual interaction. However, it is still unclear what fraction of the possible body configurations carry meaning, and what is the best way to characterize such meaning. Here, we address this by using stick figures as a low-dimensional, yet evocative, representation of body postures. We systematically scanned a set of 1,470 upper-body postures of stick figures in a dyad with a second stick figure with a neutral pose. We asked participants to rate the stick figure in terms of 20 emotion adjectives like sad or triumphant and in terms of eight active verbs that connote intent like to threaten and to comfort. The stick figure configuration space was dense with meaning: people strongly agreed on more than half of the configurations. The meaning was generally smooth in the sense that small changes in posture had a small effect on the meaning, but certain small changes had a large effect. Configurations carried meaning in both emotions and intent, but the intent verbs covered more configurations. The effectiveness of the intent verbs in describing body postures aligns with a theory, originating from the theater, called dramatic action theory. This suggests that, in addition to the well-studied role of emotional states in describing body language, much can be gained by using also dramatic action verbs which signal the effort to change the state of others. We provide a dictionary of stick figure configurations and their perceived meaning. This systematic scan of body configurations might be useful to teaching people and machines to decipher body postures in human interactions.

Hierarchy

Forms ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Levine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
Almost All

This chapter argues that if we consider closely the workings of hierarchical forms, we will find that they exert a far less orderly and systematic kind of domination than we might expect. It begins with a reading of Sophocles's Antigone. In this tragedy, the playwright sets a number powerful hierarchies in motion, almost all of them organized as simple binaries: masculine over feminine, king over subjects, friends over enemies, gods over humans. As these meet and intersect in the course of the dramatic action, a firm insistence on one hierarchy typically ends up reversing or subverting the logic of another, generating a political landscape of radical instability and unpredictability. The second section of the chapter expands to include other forms: what happens when bounded wholes and rhythms, too, come into the picture, organizing our experience atop or alongside hierarchies? Do these different, nonhomologous forms work with or athwart one another? The focus will be gender norms, a problem of longstanding interest in literary and cultural studies.

‘The One about Sitting on His Top Hat and Climbing up His Shirt Front’: Fitzgerald and Musical Theatre

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-139
Author(s):  
Jade Broughton Adams
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Film Musicals ◽  
Dramatic Action ◽  
The One ◽  
Literary Techniques ◽  
Immersive Media

This chapter shows how Fitzgerald drew upon musical comedies of the stage and screen to inform his characterisation, plotting, and integration of song with dramatic action. Using his ‘playlet’, ‘Porcelain and Pink’, as a case study, this chapter shows how Fitzgerald’s use of song underscores themes of concealed identity and satirises the consumption and advertising practices of his era. This chapter argues that the intersection of morality and entertainment, depicted in the iconic flapper figure, characterises much of Fitzgerald’s presentation of popular culture. Though he did not continue his undergraduate occupation of writing libretti for Princeton’s Triangle Club, Fitzgerald continued to allude to songs from musicals throughout his career. This chapter explores how Fitzgerald’s use of the disguise motif, amongst other literary techniques, has analogues in musical comedies, and argues for certain of his stories, like ‘The Captured Shadow’, to be read in the context of the stage and film musicals Fitzgerald enjoyed, such as those featuring Irving Berlin’s work. It is argued that it is Fitzgerald’s fascination with the theatre that fuels his lifelong interest in participative, even immersive, media. This chapter analyses the influence of film musicals on Fitzgerald’s aesthetics, particularly in terms of their lavish visual spectacle.

Education in Dramatic Action

1920 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-3
Author(s):  
M. Elizabeth Farson
Keyword(s):  
Dramatic Action

The Place for the Proclamation of the Word in Western Liturgy: Reflections on Current Practice

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
Rudolf Pacik
Keyword(s):  
Current Practice ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dramatic Action

In this contribution we shall address an issue of present-day usage: How ought the place for proclamation to be arranged, bearing in mind the needs of the celebration in its aspect as dramatic action, and the sign-character of the celebration's various elements? On the history of the matter I shall say nothing here; I shall be assuming it. 1 1 See R. Pacik, “Der Ambo in der eneuerten Liturgie” in E. Renhart and A. Schnider (eds), Sursum corda. Variationenen zu einem liturgischen Motiv. Fur Philipp Harnoncourt zum 60. Geburtstag (Graz 1991) 243-54, esp. 243-5, with survey of Roman Catholic guidelines, 245-7.

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