Dramatic Character Research Articles

Theatricalizing Hybridity: Opening up New Horizons in the Criticism of Declan Donnellan’s The Tempest

Declan Donnellan`s production of The Tempest has been innovative in its own right in three aspects. First, rather than adopt two of the most familiar themes ? the opposition of nature and nurture and colonialism ? that almost inevitably underpins modern productions of the play, Donnellan boldly deconstructed dichotomies inherent in these two discourses and drew on the new readings of the dramatic characters. Second, by doing so Donnellan has been able to locate the play at the collision between communism and capitalism, using Shakespeare for his own purposes, not unlike Jan Kott`s adjustment of historical reality to suit contemporary and political ends. Third, though Donnellan`s appropriation is more bitter than Kott, his approach has been justified as he has continued the tradition of political interpretation along with an investment in stage innovation reflecting cleverly chosen postmodern influences and the changes on the political and economic arena. This paper aims to investigate these aspects of his innovation that have not been fully appreciated by major performance criticisms of the production.

From Identities to Types

FROM IDENTITIES TO TYPES Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley by Mario DiGangi. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Pp 304,30 illustrations. $65.00 cloth.One question currently dogging Renaissance scholars is how to discuss sexuality without also discussing identity, especially gay and lesbian identity. In their provocative 2005 essay Queering History, which opposes the time-disturbing force of queerness to the presumptively teleological imperatives of historicism, Jonathan Goldberg and Madhavi Menon complain that sexuality studies has become really only a field about lesbian and gay male identity.1 Goldberg and Menon picture a field in which scholars focus almost exclusively on the history of homosexuality and read characters who have gay sex or express homoerotic sentiments as either anticipatory of, or legible only in their difference from, modern gays and lesbians. Certainly, the difference that centuries of sociological, scientific, and juridical change make to sexuality, and consequently to the concept of sexual identity, has been a topic at the forefront of the field at least since Michel Foucault undertook the project of historicizing sexuality itself. Whereas the authors of some recent studies in Renaissance sexuality seek to distance themselves from any sort of teleological history of (homosexual identity, preferring instead to focus on the erotics of temporality, affect, and materialism, others have kept their histories more tightly linked to modern identities without assuming that these modern identities are themselves stable formations against which one can measure the difference of the past.2Mario DiGangi's focus on sexual types, rather than identities, in his historically rich and often analytically surprising new book offers a marvelous example of what scholars can accomplish when they stop worrying over the approximation of early modern to modern sexualities. If an identity is a sense of self, an I that coalesces in relation to others with a similar sense of self, then the type is recognizable dramatic figure, a character: These characters look familiar not because they (necessarily) represented people likely to be encountered in the daily lives of early modern English men and women, but because they were .. . recognizable figures of literary imagination and social fantasy (5). Expressions of erotic agency by sexual types provide DiGangi with focal points for analyzing the formation and transgression of gender, social, political, and economic orders in the early modern period, while this analytical shift away from understanding dramatic characters as embodiments of variably modern sexual identities keeps the book's historical inquiries tethered quite strictly to the early modern social imaginary. Dramatists William Shakespeare and James Shirley delimit the historical trajectory of the book, which shows little to no concern for the afterlives of the types it analyzes: the sodomite, the tribade, the narcissistic courtier, the citizen wife, the bawd, and the royal favorite. Sexual Types is also no polemic: it offers no pugnacious response to, and even little engagement with, all the current queer pontificating about the perils of identity and teleology. It nonetheless offers a model for how Renaissance sexuality studies can avoid both the traps of teleological thinking and the reduction of sexuality studies to simply the study of gays and lesbians.Given the sheer amount and analytical thrust of previous scholarship on the sodomite and the tribade, DiGangi's challenge consists in framing both figures not as protohomosexuals, but rather as dramatic types. Even more challengingly, he must argue for the existence of each as a type although neither appears in character books from the period. Both types accordingly make curious choices for the first two chapters, but these chapters firmly anchor the book in the field of Renaissance sexuality studies and provide DiGangi, as the subtitle of his book suggests, with a point of Shakespearean departure. …

Staging the Writing Self: The Character of the Artist in Hélène Cixous’s Theater

The act of writing, for Hélène Cixous, offers women the freedom to articulate their true individuality. When writing theater, the author’s early intentions challenged voyeuristic traditions to free female subjects from masculine structures. In her more recent plays, however, Cixous’s writings undergo an essential process described as a decentralization of the self or “deselfing”. Escaping the “self” through theater, Cixous relinquishes dominant control of the space of creativity, permitting “others” a voice through the transformation of her actors. This essay will elaborate, in the first instance, how the theatrical event that happens on stage is the result of the writing event that happens to the author . As the process of writing theater becomes an essential aspect of the play, Cixous develops from creating the private performance of writing the self to publicly staging her experiences of writing. Lindley’s analysis of Cixous’s recent plays Voile noire, voile blanche, On ne part pas, on ne revient pas and L’Histoire (qu’on ne connaîtra jamais) articulates the aesthetics of her theater: an eternal dramatic space beyond the restrictions of time, of societal structures and of western theater. Cixous’s dramatic characters are themselves writers, floundering in a theatrical space devoid of accepted frames of reference. With each endeavoring in vain to seize control of their narrative, the characters mirror Cixous’s own failed efforts to manipulate the creation of her dramatic writings which produces instead a myriad of possibilities. As this investigation demonstrates, Cixous stages her self’s experiences writing theater, confirming an impressive journey toward new forms of theater.

Liričnost epskog pevanja starca Milije

The epic poems of Old Milija are marked by a lyrical organization of the text, which is in the function of depicting the inner life of his heroes. Every now and then, Old Milija breaks the rules of epic poems to dwell upon the inner reflection of the external world. He expresses lyricism in two ways: from his own point of view and from the point of view of his epic hero. Bearing in mind the whole drama his heroes are going through, particularly with respect to their relationship with women, Old Milija manages to find a lyrical formula which, in the epic structure of the text, enhances the dramatic character and the aesthetic value of the poem. The paper deals with the poem's lyrical layers, which are in the function of the psychoanalysis of the characters and represent a characteristic feature of this exceptionally talented Vuk's poet.

Book Review: Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, by Eric Deggans

Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation. Eric Deggans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 275 pp. $28 hbk.Eric Deggans, media critic for the Tampa Bay Times and contributor to National Public Radio, blames a fractured media landscape for what he sees as an escalation of racism in news and entertainment programs, and he calls for increased media literacy to lay the foundation for a more meaningful discourse on race in America.Deggans offers a report from the trenches with personal interviews and previously published columns informing much of this work. The book's title comes in part from Deggans' disputes with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who labeled Deggans a race-baiter for his critiques of O'Reilly's show. Although conservatives draw the brunt of Deggans' ire, the author asserts that pundits, journalists, and television programmers across the ideological spectrum are guilty of presenting simplistic pictures of racial issues to appeal to niche audiences. Deggans argues,Today's fastest-growing media platforms now focus on smaller segments of the audience- the plumpest parts of a seriously fragmented viewing/reading/listening public. And one way to ensure that those audience segments develop fierce loyalty is to feed them messages demonizing other outlets and the groups who might gather there.Deggans lays out his arguments in readable prose, frequently introducing his topics with anecdotes and personal experiences. In Chapter 1, Deggans uses the Trayvon Martin shooting in South Florida to illustrate the ways in which media on the left and right resorted to racial stereotypes and familiar story lines. At MSNBC, the Rev. Al Sharpton used his show to garner sympathy for the victim's family, while on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera insinuated that Martin was partly to blame for his death because he dressed in a way that drew suspicion. Both sides appealed to their audiences, but neither adequately addressed the complex socioeconomic issues raised by the shoot- ing, Deggans argues.In Chapter 2, Deggans looks at the ways political bloggers and media activists drive the national news agenda. He focuses on the ACORN and Shirley Sherrod tapes to discuss how the mainstream media's fear of being scooped made them vulnerable to the shoddy reporting of bloggers James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart. In Chapter 3, the author asserts that these inaccurate reports found traction because for years Fox News presented a parade of guests and commentators who had insinuated that blacks were lazy, immoral, and prejudiced against whites. In Chapter 4, Deggans discusses some of the perplexing and subtle ways racism crept into the 2012 elections, including Newt Gingrich's remarks calling for paychecks over welfare checks and Hermann Cain's defenders decrying stories of his marital infidelity as electronic lynching.Although most of the book concerns the news media, Deggans also considers ways television entertainment programmers have resorted to racial stereotypes when creat- ing characters in dramas and sitcoms and when casting participants on reality televi- sion shows. …

New Approaches in the Analysis of the Contemporary Dramatic Character

Abstract The character is the core of dramaturgy. The current paper aims to present the newest research regarding the contemporary dramatic character. The study looks at the recent theoretical approaches that hold a double perspective on the character: as a writer's composition and as an actor's performance. The character is defined through his name, implication and role in the action, but also through his own discourse. Based on the connection between similarities and differences, each trait of a character facilitates the revelation of the whole image. The result is a microcosmic structure of a specific typology of characters, interconnected and interdependent. Certain specific, defining characteristics will be identified and, by the relational view, we will succeed to visualise the dramatic identity of the character. Such a reading pattern provides force to the characters analyzed, but also it permits the revealing and interpretation of the character as a complex ensemble which leads to new revelations on the meaning of contemporary plays.

A Socio-Linguistic Study on the Appellation of Characters in Dramas

A Socio-Linguistic Study on the Appellation of Characters in Dramas

«Que es gente que come arroz, / pasas, higos y alcuzcuz»: the Construction of the Stereotyped Moorish Figure in Nine Plays by Lope de Vega

Nine are the plays by Lope de Vega in which the Moorish figure can be considered as an active dramatic character. In them, the Fenix presents to the audience a character which is basically a distorted image of the real social subject: the author seems to rely on the features of a disfigured «puppet», conceived by some levels of the socio-political environment of the time, in order to adjust the character to his own theatrical logic and present it from a comical perspective. Lope carries out his dramatic purpose through the use of four parameters: the choice of arabic names, the process of conversion to Christianity, the references to drinking wine and eating pork and, finally, the use of the moorish jargon. This paper focuses therefore on the observation of the stereotyped attributes that constitute the backbone of each of those figures, and reflects also about the meaning of the comical procedure that Lope manages in all the works of the analysed corpus.

Girls’ “New Femininity” Refusals and “Good Girl” Recuperations in Soap Talk

The “new femininities” produced in postfeminist media confront girls with complex and challenging subjectivities that reach into the spaces where girls engage in their own productions of self. Feminist scholarship has interrogated and critiqued the “girl” produced in postfeminist popular culture texts, highlighting her internal contradictions and often problematic re/production within the heterosexual matrix. Yet, despite an intensified focus on girls featured in popular culture, the ways that girls themselves make sense of the “girl” in contemporary femininity texts has been relatively neglected. Viewing girls' sense-making of femininity in popular culture texts as crucial in the process of their subjectivity or self-production, in this paper we examine pre-teen girls' negotiations of femininity through their talk about Scarlett, a main teen girl character in a New Zealand soap drama. Our analyses and discussion focus on girls' management of the contradictory and regulatory productions of femininity in the text, in particular the often classed conditions under which girls recuperate the “good girl” discourse to refuse the regulatory femininities inside the heterosexual matrix. We suggest that an absence of empowering discourses outside of postfeminism's sexual empowerment limits girls' resources for critiquing and challenging regulatory femininities, “new” and “traditional.”

Social stratification and stylistic choices in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday

The English playwright Thomas Dekker belonged to a generation of dramatists, along with Shakespeare and Jonson, who, particularly in comedy, discriminated their characters through lexical and stylistic choices. This new conception of the dramatic character is well illustrated in Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600). Written and produced in London at a time when the city attracted many migrants from all over England and Wales as well as the European continent, the speech of the characters created by Dekker represents different social groups as well as nationalities. This paper seeks to investigate socio-linguistic choices associated with selected characters and code-switching between English and Dutch in Dekker’s play. Keywords: Thomas Dekker; The Shoemaker’s Holiday; Dutch; London English; standardisation and language change; socio-historical linguistics

Mario DiGangi. Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Pp. 304. $65.00 (cloth).

Mario DiGangi. Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Pp. 304. $65.00 (cloth).

:Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley

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The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama

The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama Peter Ramey (bio) One of the surprises for students first encountering the Middle English religious drama is the free and unself-conscious manner in which the dramatic characters speak directly to the audience. In the four major extant cycles of this drama—the York, Towneley, N-Town, and Chester collections1—the dramatis personae candidly confront the audience members, turning to preach to, implore, mock, and even threaten those watching the play. The ever-growing body of scholarship on medieval festive culture helps contextualize these staged interactions within a spectrum of ludic activities and seasonal customs, from mummings and group dances to the more formal civic processions.2 Such "games," as these festive activities are commonly called in the period, tend to blur the line between spectator and participant. As Richard Axton points out in a discussion of medieval dancing games, these "games may be watched; but that seems accidental, not essential. The important thing is to enter the game and take part."3 Axton's comment could apply equally to the interactive address within the religious drama, and in this essay I use the concept supplied by the Middle English term game as framework for interpreting these instances of staged interplay, moments in which it is precisely the audience's task to "enter the game and take part." For the audience-participants, these games operate as open-ended contestations of social and spiritual affiliation as a diverse assortment of dramatis personae compete for the audience's attention, affection, and collusion. As they are subjected to such an array of pressures and appeals, the audience members' unscripted reactions serve as a means of investigating their own identifications and values. Viewed in terms of an audience-interactive game, the real suspense in [End Page 55] the religious drama revolves around the question of audience response; the plays themselves are less interesting for what they portray than for the range of potential reactions they may provoke. The term game—along with pleye and ludus—is commonly used in late medieval English texts to refer to dramatic productions,4 and earlier scholarship on the religious plays made use of this terminology to formulate a theory of medieval drama, proposing that game and pleye would allow for the performance of sacred subject matter without sacrilege.5 Yet in this earlier work game was not understood as an activity involving the audience. The line of argument posited here is that this dramatic game is not one the audience merely watches; it is a game the audience plays. In so doing this perspective views the audience as the imaginative and affective center of the Middle English religious drama as a whole. While the subject of audience roles and responses is a burgeoning critical category,6 the present approach utilizes game to move in a different, if complementary, direction from most other recent readings, stimulated in part by current studies of electronic game design and "the aesthetics of interactive systems."7 Overall, "game" provides a valuable conceptual framework for appreciating the audience-directed and interactive work of this drama. Etymologically, "game" implies participation rather than observation8 (whereas "theater," for example, is rooted in the idea of "seeing," from θεȜσθαι, "to behold").9 Like its near synonyms pleye and ludus, in Middle English usage, game encompasses far more than dramatic activities, and can refer to amusing pastimes of any stripe,10 most often involving partakers rather than spectators. Of course, the medieval English term could also signify, as it does in present-day English, a structured contest carried out for fun. As it will be used in the sections below for the various types of audience address, game refers to a staged and rule-governed encounter between two or more groups or individuals, operating around a basic conflict or confrontation, and working toward an undetermined outcome. Since the medieval concept of game includes a range of cultural customs and festivities, my definition reflects this broader sense and builds on Tom Pettitt and Leif Søndergaard's definition of medieval custom and ceremonies as an "encounter"—"a deliberate and traditionally structured interaction between two distinct groups," usually one more...

Strindberg's Vampiric Narrators

August Strindberg once claimed that his novels and stories were “plays in epic form.” But Strindberg's fluid formulation of genre and medium is complicated and enriched by his understanding of narration and authorship as vampiric. In the novel The Red Room (1879) and the play The Dance of Death (1900), Strindberg attributes vampiric qualities of authorship to characters that function as narrators. Strindberg's vampires sustain themselves with language rather than blood, and the forms they use to drain their victims are inextricable from the epic narration Strindberg explicitly adapts and develops in his dramaturgy. By assigning formally generative movement across genres to vampire characters that perform the functions of narrators, Strindberg depicts dramatic character as a parasitic performance—and a locus of formal change in modern drama.

안톤 체홉 희곡에 표현된 사실주의 연기 -세자매를 중심으로-

Anton Chekhov was able to deliver a significant influence to the 20th realist drama types and styles, because his deep thoughts about diverse aspects of human life were realistically expressed on stages. Western realistic actors endeavored to embody their routines based on their words, behaviors, and habits. Chekhov used his outstanding talent to identify the characteristics of people, created unforgettable drama characters, and focused on their behavioral motives. From his philosophical point of view, Chekhov argued that secrets are hidden in life itself, and that everything, shown on the stage, should be as it is in our actual daily life. The realistic acting, recognizing the difference between the daily truth and the truth mentioned in works, pursued acting styles by which audiences regarded play characters as the real people.

Devised Drama, Shakespeare and Creativity: Practical Work on Othello’s Pathos

This paper explores a cross-disciplinary approach to performance studies (devised drama) and creativity, and their role in contemporary communities. Specifically, it discusses the possibilities of using drama practice and Shakespeare's themes as a means of learning about ourselves and the world we live in. Drawing on observations and discussions conducted during an undergraduate drama programme, the authors experiment with ideas that connect drama to the students' contexts and favourite social issues. They then examine the impact of teaching drama on students learning as both creative artists and citizens. From these accounts, the authors explore how devising new dramatic characters and scenes can develop students' powers of critical perception and contribution to the community. Practical work based on Othello, a play by W. Shakespeare was used to generate examples of creative practice within the conventions of drama. The paper argues that devised drama on Shakespeare's themes and characters can be used to address current social issues in contemporary community contexts, and intrigue undergraduate drama students to produce creative work and develop a sense of self and others in the community.

‘Faming of the Shrews’: Medieval Drama and Feminist Approaches

This article examines the growth of gendered critical readings of medieval drama and looks at the changes that have occurred during the last decades. The journey moves from the placement of women in a position of obscurity towards the acceptance of the distinctive contribution made through their roles as audience members, back-stage helpers, and their representation on stage, albeit played by men. Given that women characters in medieval drama have often been interpreted as unruly, or shrewish, this article examines how the lens of feminism brought the role of women in medieval drama increased exposure: the shrews were placed in the limelight. Using the five phases of revisioning a feminist education developed in the 1980s by American educationalist, Peggy McIntosh, the article analyses how each stage of feminist scholarship is linked to a particular set of ideological blueprints and demonstrates how the feminist scholarship of medieval drama replicates McIntosh's five phases of revisioning. The article concludes by investigating why feminist revisionist studies of medieval drama occurred so late in the day, in comparison to contemporary scholarship being undertaken in other areas of performance studies.

Theatre at the Birth of Semiotics: Charles Sanders Peirce, François Delsarte, and Steele Mackaye

This paper explores the role theatre played in the life of Charles Peirce and his second wife, Juliette, from 1884–1888. Peirce became acquainted with playwright and director Steele Mackaye, who trained Juliette in the acting techniques associated with “aesthetic expression,” a movement derived from the work of Francois Delsarte. I first trace the Peirces’ interactions with Mackaye during this period. The paper then demonstrates affinities between Peirce’s semeiotic account of cognition as mediated through feeling and sensation and the architecture of Delsarte’s system of actor training. The latter employs Delsarte’s semeiotique as an analytical tool for conveying the dramatic character’s inner life. A function of mind, semeiotique intertwines with the functions of life and soul to complete the actor’s task. The affinities between these two accounts of semeiotic emerge from the paper’s analysis of Peirce’s 1888 essay on aesthetic expression, “Trichotomic,” and related passages from A Guess at the Riddle .

Vygotsky’s Hamlet: the dialectic method and personality psychology

topicality of L. S. Vygotsky's research in sphere of psychology of art is connected to methodological potential of his works, in which a special role belongs to his work on Hamlet. historical context for creation of art psychology by Vygotsky during twenty years of last century has been associated with active philosophical discussion on topic of interaction between people and world. idea of birth of personality and self-identity through resistance and creativity was main line of theoretical thought of those years; Frank (1971) called this line the problem of need for personal selfrealization through creativity was at heart of Russian philosophy in first third of twentieth century, and, in my opinion, spokesperson for that idea was philosopher N. A. Berdyaev, who formulated concept of existential dialectic:Self-realization of individual suggests resistance, requires struggle against enslaving power of against conformity with world. Rejection of identity, disagreement with dissolution in surrounding may reduce pain, and a person can easily go that way. Consent to slavery reduces pain, disagreement increases pain. (Berdyaev, 2000, p. 23)For Berdyaev, a person is born into resistance for sake of creativity: Personality is essentially rebellious and disobedient; it is resistance, a continuous creative act (Berdyaev, 2000, p. 37). dialectics of personality's birth through art are shown in works of Russian philosopher and psychologist M. Rubinstein, who is, unfortunately, almost forgotten. One of my articles is devoted to his oeuvre (Bayanova, 2009).In beginning problem of interaction between people and arose in Russian philosophy from opposition of subject and object. analysis of this opposition began in epistemology. The human is in or thrown into world, wrote Berdyaev. stands before as before a mystery, requiring permission. existence of a human depends on and he dies in and because of world (Berdyaev,2000, p. 241) object confronts subject, but objectivity is in subject, in dominant purpose of subject, in existence of object in name of subject. Berdyaev describes two views of world: cosmocentric view and anthropocentric view. According to cosmocentric view, people, as part of located in space, experience and at limit of knowledge they turn to an object. According to anthropocentric view, people are located not in space but in time, and they create while overcoming limits of space.The problem of interaction of people and initiated by historical context, acquired a dramatic character as a problem of personal survival within culture. This problem has been presented by art theorist, literary critic, and philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. From general issues of human existence in culture, Bakhtin comes to problem of human existence in historical and cultural situation. For Bakhtin an individual being is a life event. He understands the as an event (not as existence in its readiness) (Bakhtin, 1979, p. 364).Rubinstein in On Meaning of Life (1927) expresses following thought: Each animal is what it is; only a person is initially nothing. What he may be, he has to make himself... and to make by his freedom. I can only be what I make from myself. At this height... new perspectives have been opened by themselves, and as a logical consequence man-person stands before us as main creative force, creator of essence of (Rubinstein, p. 72).Finding essence of people in their involvement in creation of culture, Rubenstein shows this fact as a turning point of cosmic significance. It opens up a new kind of freedom that is different from natural one. …

Rainy Nights

Rainy Nights Translated by Andrew Schelling (bio) durdinaniśīthapavane niḥsaṃcārāsu nagaravīthiṣupatyau videśayāte paraṃ sukhaṃ jaghanacapalāyāḥ durdina. rainy day, bad weather niśītha. night pavane. (loc. abs. when [there are] night winds and rainy weather) wind niḥsaṃcārāsu. deserted, empty of walkers (with streets) nagara. city vīthiṣu. (loc. abs.) (f.) streets, market patyau. (loc. abs. when my husband) husband videśa. abroad, another land yāte. (loc. abs.) has gone paraṃ. supreme, great sukhaṃ. pleasure, delight, happily jaghana-capalā. (bv. cmpd.) woman who moves (shakes) her hips; sexually exuberant jaghana. hips, buttocks, loins, vulva capalā. (f.) moving about, quavering, inconstant [End Page 98] Rainy nightsthe city streets desertedhusband travelingin a far-off land.This is when Jaghanacapalā rejoicesshe likes to sleeparound. The key to this poem is a compound word, jaghanacapalā, which means a shaking of the hips or loins (or buttocks or vulva). The way it appears here, with a feminine ending, makes it a bahuvṛhi compound: woman who rocks her loins. Colloquially, this means something like “who sleeps around” or, more playfully, who shakes her tail feathers. But there is more. The poem shows up in an anthology attributed to a woman identified as Jaghanacapalā. This means that any reading since at least the twelfth century—the date of the anthology in which the poem appears—has taken it for a proper name as well as a woman’s description. Hence it carries two meanings, and you need to translate both to get the force, the śakti, of the verse. There’s a further twist. Jaghanacapalā is also the name of a poetic meter or rhythm in Sanskrit, the two-line pattern this poem occurs in. Sanskrit metrical patterns carry vivid names, which must originate in dance. Others are śārdūla-vikrīḍita (tiger’s play), Girl with a Ball, and so forth. The first handbook of India’s art, the Natyaśāstra of Bharata Muni, traces the origins of art to a sacred theater—founded as a “Fifth Veda” by Brahma the Creator—that included dance, music, poetry, costume, and stagecraft. (A good translation of this origin myth appears in Daumal p. 43.) In the surviving dramas of Sanskrit, of which there are a great many, at moments of poignant or intense emotion, an actor breaks into dance, accompanied by music and the ceremonial recitation of a poem. Jaghanacapalā as a metrical pattern would have begun with the dance of a dramatic character and a poem that perhaps regulated her footwork. The classical poets saw this as a particular skill, not easy to accomplish: working into a poem the name of its meter. This seems quite postmodern—like the painter Jasper Johns affixing to his canvas one of his rulers; or using a Savarin coffee can filled with paintbrushes for his Painted Bronze sculpture. [End Page 99] Andrew Schelling Andrew Schelling, born in 1953 at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., has written, edited, or translated twenty books. Early opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, plus an encounter with India’s texts, set him on a lifelong engagement with Asian literature. He studied Sanskrit at the University of California at Berkeley, and began to translate from its classical poetry tradition around 1978. His first book, Dropping the Bow: Poems of Ancient India, received the Academy of American Poets translation award in 1992, the first time the Academy had honored work done from an Asian language. Schelling’s own poetry and essays emerge from the Southern Rocky Mountain bioregion in which he lives. Recent books of poetry wrangle with the Arapaho language as a way of reading landscape and the natural cycles; they include From the Arapaho Songbook and A Possible Bag. He has edited The Oxford Anthology of Bhakti Literature and Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Spiritual and Erotic Longing (forthcoming from Counterpoint Press). Living on the Front Range of Colorado, he is active on land-use issues and teaches at Naropa University. He also teaches regularly at Deer Park Institute, in India’s Himalayan foothills. Copyright © 2013 University of Hawai‘i...