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This collection of essays explores some of the avenues along which the field of comparative drama studies could be reconfigured at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It offers a comparative analysis of theatre across national and linguistic boundaries while simultaneously acknowledging newer trends in ethnic studies. Indeed, the contributors to this critical anthology productively combine traditional comparative literature methodologies with performance approaches and postcolonial perspectives. In this way, they shed new light on the intertextual, multi-ethnic, and cross-cultural dialogues linking theatrical traditions from Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, and the Pacific region. This book's broad scope bears testimony to the fact that transnational studies can fruitfully illuminate the multiple dramatic voices of our increasingly globalized age.
List of contents
Contents: Dorothy Figueira/Marc Maufort: Theatres in the Round: New Perspectives on Comparative Drama - Steven P. Sondrup: Thoughts on the Origin of Nordic Drama - Geoffrey V. Davis: «Uncomfortable Truths about Contemporary Britain»: Black and South Asian Theatre in the U.K. - Caroline De Wagter: Land and Cultural Memory: Djanet Sears's The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God and Diane Glancy's Jump Kiss: An Indian Legend - Harry J. Elam, Jr./Michele Elam: The High Stakes of Mixed Race: Post-Race, Post-Apartheid Performance in the U.S. and South Africa - Marc Maufort: Celebrating Indigeneity: Contemporary Aboriginal Playwriting in Canada and Australasia - David O'Donnell: Quoting the «Other»: Intertextuality and Indigeneity in Pacific Theatre - Rossella Ferrari: Beckett's Chinese Progeny: Absurdity, Waiting, and the Godot Motif in Contemporary China - Kathleen L. Komar: A Punk-Rock Elektra: Ruth Margraff's The Elektra Fugues - Ross Shideler: Per Olov Enquist's and Racine's Phaedra - Dorothy Figueira: Theories of Myth and Myths of Theory in Thomas Mann and Girish Karnad - John Burt Foster: Soyinka (Euripides-Nietzsche) Thomas Mann: Intertextual Dialogues across the Twentieth Century.
About the author
Dorothy Figueira is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia (USA). Her most recent book is Otherwise Occupied: Pedagogies of Alterity and the Brahminization of Theory. She has published extensively on East-West literary relations, literary theory, travel narratives, and exoticism. She has served as President of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA).
Marc Maufort is Professor of English, American and postcolonial literatures at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is the current European Secretary of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA). His most recent book is Labyrinth of Hybridities: Avatars of O'Neillian Realism in Multi-ethnic American Drama (1972-2003).
Sylvie Vranckx is a Research Fellow with the National Fund for Scientific Research-Belgium. A PhD candidate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, she is writing a doctoral dissertation on the representation of trauma in the works of Aboriginal Canadian writers.
Report
«[T]he volume is exquisitely executed and a very stimulating read, in particular as it offers glimpses of so many different literatures. But glimpses they do not stay as none of the articles included in the collection can possibly be called superficial. All of them are broad ranging, comprehensive and intriguing, something that cannot be said about that many collections of essays.» (Michael Heinze, theaterforschung.de)
