Modern Drama And Modern Criticism - 2836 Words

â€Å"Nothing is harder to bring to life for a modern reader than the theatre of the past,† Michael Booth states in his book, English Melodrama, as an opening to his chapter â€Å"the character of melodrama†. Booth resumes by saying that to reconstruct extinct theaters, to inhabit them once again with noisy audiences, and to light them with flickering candles, harsh hissing gas, and soft multi-colored pools of limelight picking out actors long forgotten, acting in old-fashioned ways in front of creaking flats and jerking wings, is to make dead eyes see and dead ears hear. After research on this topic, I realized that the task is even more difficult when the kind of theatre under discussion is now extinct, and toward which modern drama and modern criticism is unsympathetic. This is the case with the melodrama of the nineteenth century, the most popular dramatic form of its age, a form that depended more on graphic exhilaration and the thrill of the moment – qualit ies almost beyond critical recall – than anything ever written for the stage. Now it is all gone, and I will hopefully through this essay bring some of this back to life. Yet because of its energy and vividness, something of its nature can be imparted. Melodrama had never been rated highly by dramatic critics or historians, whose most contemptuous word is â€Å"melodramatic.† To describe and raise it out of the neglect and contumely where it has generally remained all this century, to show it so that it can at least beShow MoreRelatedJohn Dryden884 Words   |  4 PagesQuarrel of the Moderns and the Ancients Those beauties of the French poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where it is, but are not sufficient to give it where it is not: they are indeed the beauties of a statue but not of a man (Poesy Abridged). Dryden wrote this essay as a dramatic dialogue with four characters representing four critical positions. The four critical positions are ancients verses moderns, unities, French verses English drama, separation of tragedy and comedy versesRead MoreThe Great Helmsman s Mr. Big A New Play About Lu Xun ( 1881-1936 ) Essay1382 Words   |  6 PagesA giant statue overlooking the stage, faceless yet easily recognizable as the Great Helmsman, scenes that resemble a Cultural Revolution-era public persecution — many aspects of â€Å"Mr. Big,† a new play about Lu Xun (1881–1936), modern China’s most famous writer, carry political undertones, and it’s not to everyone’s liking. â€Å"Mr. Big† opens with Lu Xun’s soul heading to heaven after his death. Using imagery from the Cultural Revolution, heaven slowly turns into hell, and at the end of the play twoRead MoreEssay about The Role of Realism in Ibsens, A Dolls House737 Words   |  3 Pagessocial commentary, exploring the moral conflict within his characters and the dangers of deception. Ibsen’s theatre background has shaped â€Å"A Doll’s House† into a realistic prose drama, which ensured that his idea’s and themes could be easily translated to engage a wider audience. As â€Å"A Doll’s House† is a realistic drama each of Ibsen’s character encapsulate a role in his society. Nora as the main protagonist is branded by others as â€Å"an extravagant little thing†, and represents what was typicalRead MoreHindi as a Language1451 Words   |  6 Pagestook its form and since then it has been constantly modified. History of Hindi literature as a whole can be divided into four stages: Adikal (the Early Period), Bhaktikal (the Devotional Period), Ritikal (the Scholastic Period) and Adhunikkal (the Modern Period). Adikal- Adikal starts from the middle of the 10th century to the beginning of the 14th century. The poetry of this period has been divided into three categories Apabhramsha Poetry, Heroic Poetry and Miscellaneous Poetry. Apabhramsha PoetryRead More The Character of Linda Loman in Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman524 Words   |  3 Pagessubjective category.   In any case what feel is always more real to us than what we know, and we feel the family relationship while we only know, and we feel the family relationship while we only know the social one. (Arthur Miller, The Family in Modern Drama) If Willy is not totally unsympathetic (and he is not), much of the goodness in him is demonstrated in his devotion to his wife, according to his lights.   Though he is often masterful and curt, he is still deeply concerned about her: I wasRead MoreMovie Analysis : The Notebook 1088 Words   |  5 Pagesopposite sides, and both are continuous voices in the boy’s life as he takes on life struggles such as relationships, racism, persona development, and the decision on what type of man he wants to be. This film is classified under the genre of Crime Drama. From this classification, a viewer is set-up with a variety of expectations that can overlap somewhat with those in the notebook, but also something distinctly different to this film. The conventions that an audience agrees to include seeing illegalRead MoreSuccessful Female Crime Drama Leads: Where Does that Leave Motherhood?1047 Words   |  5 PagesIn recent years, there has been a gender shift in crime dramas on television. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, the viewer saw the lead characters to be heavily male dominated with a woman thrown in for mostly sex appeal. The shift from the stereotypical nuclear family, with a stay-at-home mom, has impacted many genres of television programing and exemplified in Paul Cantor’s â€Å"The Simpson: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family,† when referring to the deviation from a historic ideal family â€Å"in factRead More Essay on Stagnant Lives in Streetcar Named Desir e and Glass Menagerie1196 Words   |  5 Pagesassessment of Tennessee Williams plays proves true when one looks closely at the characters of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Their lives run closely parallel to one another in their respective dramas. They reject their present lives, yet their methods of escape are dissimilar. Both women have lost someone they cared for, and so seek to hold, and unintentionally suffocate, those they have left. A major problem that both Blanche and AmandaRead MoreThe Field Of Biblical Literary Criticism1168 Words   |  5 PagesResearch in the field of biblical literary criticism have rapidly increased in recent decades. The publication of Robert Alter s 1981 The Art of Biblical Narrative stamps the symbolic arrival of a style of analysis that has now become entrenched in modern biblical research. Robert Alter argues that the Bible is a largely cohesive literary text to be read with a literary purpose. In this essay it is asked if assumptions about texts predicated on the study of modern literature can be profitably appliedRead MoreEssay on Carson McCullers1148 Words   |  5 PagesCarson McCullers (Allen 208). Her work is marked with the feeling of loneliness coming from her lonely childhood (spiritual isolation is the basis of most of her themes) and the music she always wanted to study. She wrote novels, short stories and dramas. In all she received the recognition of both the pub lic, her fellows writers, and critics.      Carson McCullers is a talented Southern American writer who touched others with her ability to describe human complexity with a touch of poesy