Literary Criticism : Drama

Examines a variety of plays between 1550-1600 to demonstrate how they asserted ideas and ideals of 'Englishness' for audiences. more...

Price: $79.00

Alternative worlds in films such as The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind offer similarities and resonances to our world, but provide a way for filmmakers to address the human condition by forming a sincere and serious connection with everyday life. An illuminating new book explores the history, background and meaning of films that feature alternative worlds – films in which characters cross back and forth between another world and our own, which bring out correspondences and resonances between the worlds they depict. The popularity of such films suggests a need to engage with important themes during troubling times, as well as to be entertained and transported, says author James Walters – rather than merely constituting part of the wider trend of adults finding comfort in books and films ostensibly for children. The films discussed in the book use the fantasy of an alternative world to debate a series of universal conditions associated with human experience: insecurity, ambition, loneliness, apprehension, bravery, vanity, inarticulateness, anxiety, ambiguity, introversion, love, and so on. Because these films are often viewed as Hollywood ‘product’ they don’t always have the intellectual cachet of European films dealing with similar themes, but Walters suggests that there is complexity and depth behind these superficially light films. Traditionally, Realist cinema has dealt with weighty issues, but increasingly films featuring alternative worlds offer an engaging way of dealing with ‘serious’ content and issues. In each of the films discussed the flight from the real world results in characters having to face reality again, equipped with new knowledge and experience, enabling them to find a way of living there from that day on. more...

Price: $10.00

Samuel Beckett is a challenging giant of 20th century literature, and Beckett studies increasingly focus on the interwar period for evidence of Beckett's subsequent embrace of an 'art of failure'. This monograph is based on close analysis of the newly-released notebooks and transcriptions compiled by Beckett from 1929-1940, which shed important and unique insight into Beckett's working methods, original sources and literary development. In particular they reveal the central paradox that Beckett's professions of 'ignorance and impotence' were founded upon extensive erudition and academic practices reflecting his interests in philosophy and psychology. This is the first book to offer an extended study of how recent archival discoveries can contribute to the fundamental transformation of Beckett's truly revolutionary literature. more...

Price: $130.00

Beyond Auteurism is a comprehensive study of nine film authors from France, Italy and Spain who since the 1980s have blurred the boundaries between art-house and mainstream, and national and transnational film production. Maule examines how the individuals have maintained a dialectical relationship with the authorial tradition of the national cinema to which each belongs. In considering this tradition, Maule seeks to illustrate that the film author is not only the most important symbol of European cinema’s cultural tradition and commitment, but is also a crucial part of Europe’s efforts to develop its cinema within domestic and international film industries. The book studies the work, practices and styles of European film-makers including Luc Besson, Claire Denis, Gabriele Salvatores and Alejandro Amenábar. Beyond Auteurism offers an important contribution to a historicized and contextualized view of film authorship from a theoretical framework that rejects Western-centred and essentialist views of cinematic practices and contexts. more...

Price: $10.00

This original analysis of contemporary British pantomime addresses the question of how pantomime creates a unique interactive relationship with, and potentially transformative experience for, its audiences. British pantomime draws audiences into the story, an engagement with the hero, and an empathetic attachment to the success of the quest. Attention is held by the familiarity of the event, and the comedians draw the audience into a relationship of complicity as they unite to create the unique experience of the live interactive performance. At other times the audience is diverted by the artifice of dance, the illusion of transformation and the surreal playfulness of physical and verbal comedy. The trick of pantomime is to maintain an effective balance between the intellectual appreciation of artifice, the chaotic complicity of interactivity, and the emotional engagement of story-telling. This is an accessible and valuable text that encourages readers to review their assumptions about pantomime and reconsider its importance as a popular theatre form. more...

Price: $10.00