The play within the play : : the performance of meta-theatre and self-reflection / / edited by Gerhard Fischer, Bernhard Greiner.

• Superior document: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 112
• TeilnehmendeR: Fischer, Gerhard, 1945-; Greiner, Bernhard.
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft ; 112.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (477 p.)
• Notes: Selection of papers delivered at the 2004 Sydney German Studies Symposium and revised and edited for publication.

The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play . The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting – from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy – but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play : as ultimate affirmation of the ‘self’ (the ‘Hamlet paradigm’), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm / Bernhard Greiner -- Self-Reflexivity in the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation / Yifen Beus -- ‘Backstage Discourse’: Staging the Other in Ethnographic and Colonial Literature / Klaus R. Scherpe -- The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation / David Roberts -- Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks / Caroline Sheaffer-Jones -- The Figure in the Carpet: Metadramatical Concepts in Jacob Bidermann’s Cenodoxus (1602) / Christian Sinn -- Holding a Mirror up to Theatre: Baro, Gougenot, Scudéry and Corneille as Self-Referentialists in Paris, 1628-35/36 / John Golder -- Rehearsing the Endgame: Max Frisch’s Biography: A Play / Manfred Jurgensen -- Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real Thing (1982): New Frames and Old / Barnard Turner -- The Invisible Fool: Botho Strauss’s Postmodern Metadrama and the History of Theatrical Reality / Ulrike Landfester -- Queen of a Bathtub: Hanoch Levin’s Political, Aesthetic and Ethical Metatheatricality / Shimon Levy -- The Disguised and Distanced Real(ity) Play within the Fictitious Play in Israeli Stage-Drama / Gad Kaynar -- A Lacerated Culture, A Self-Reflexive Theatre: The Case of Israeli Drama / Zahava Caspi -- ‘Very Tragical Mirth’: The Play within the Play as a Strategy for Interweaving Tragedy and Comedy / Frank Zipfel -- Play and Reality in Austrian Drama: The Figure of the Magister Ludi / Herbert Herzmann -- Playing Tragedy: Detaching Tragedy from Itself in Classical Drama from Lessing to Büchner / Helmut J. Schneider -- Playwrights Playing with History: The Play within the Play and German Historical Drama (Büchner, Brecht, Weiss, Müller) / Gerhard Fischer -- Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz’s Festung and Albert Ostermaier’s The Making of B-Movie / Birgit Haas -- The Context Within: The Play within the Play between Theatre Anthropology, System Theory and Postcolonial Critique / Lada Cale Feldman -- Intercultural Framing in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête / Maurice Blackman -- Re-Interpreting Shadow Material in an Ancient Greek Myth: Another Night: Medea / Kyriaki Frantzi -- John Gay and the Frame Play / Yvonne Noble -- Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude / Donald Bewley -- Theatrical Transformation, Media Superimposition and Scenic Reflection: Pictorial Qualities of Modern Theatre and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss Opera, Ariadne auf Naxos / Theresia Birkenhauer -- Pushkin in Love, or: A (Screen)Play within the Play. The Cinematic Potential of Romantic-Ironic Narration in Eugene Onegin / Erika Greber -- The Text within the Text, the Screen within the Screen: Multi-Layered Representations in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet / Alessandro Abbate -- ‘Gotta Dance’ (in the Dark): Lars von Trier’s Critique of the Musical Genre / Ken Woodgate -- The Game of the Narrative: Kleist’s Fiction from a Game-Theoretical Perspective / Tim Mehigan -- French Beans and Mashed Potatoes: Agonistic Play and Symbolic Acting in Gottfried Keller’s Prose Fiction / Alexander Honold -- Playing with the Apparatus: Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and Barrie Kosky’s Interpretation for the Melbourne International Arts Festival / Ulrike Garde -- Notes on Contributors -- Index of Names.