Concept Of Play Research Articles

Norwid’s drama of “social transfigurations”

The article discusses Norwid’s concept of drama and theatre; notably, he assumes their close relationship with social life and its historical changes. Basing on analyses of meta-dramatic and meta-theatrical statements made by the poet, contained primarily in the essays “Widowiska w ogóle uważane” and “Białe kwiaty” [Performances considered in general; White flowers], in passages from lectures on Słowacki (O Juliuszu Słowackim), and in the introduction to Pierścień Wielkiej-Damy [The Ring of a Great Lady], it is possible to formulate the thesis that Norwid intentionally developed a vision of drama based on the idea of “social transfigurations.”What is more, the character of his dramatic works enables one to interpret his particular theatrical pieces in the light of anthropological and sociological categories of social drama and cultural performance. After all, most of Norwid’s dramatic works depict situations of social change in terms of rites of passage and theatricalized social practices, e.g. social ceremonies or ritualized interactions. As a result, Norwidian drama becomes an artistic representation of forces shaping collective life, a lens facilitating their understanding in the spirit of social anthropology, and an important factor in the formation of man.

The Gespenst of Postcolonial Theory

“What is going on in Germany?” asked Natalie Zemon Davis after Munich suspended the acclaimed play Vögel (Birds) by Wajdi Mouawad in November 2022. Davis, a renowned historian, had been deeply involved in the play's conception and production only to see it pulled for alleged antisemitism and Holocaust relativization.1 This was not an isolated example.2

Investigation of the Opinions of Drama Leaders on Drama Education and Activities

This study aimed at determining the opinions of drama leaders, who practiced with preschool-age groups in the field of drama, about drama activities and education. In line with this purpose, the opinions of drama leaders on the concept of drama, the learning outcomes of drama activities on children, the approaches of parents to drama, and the problems or difficulties experienced by leaders in drama education were determined. This study was carried out as a case study, one of the qualitative research methods, by taking the opinions of 27 leaders who provided drama education to preschool children within the framework of formal or non-formal education institutions in İstanbul, Turkey. A semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers was used as a data collection tool. As a result of this study, 4 different themes regarding the perspectives of the leaders on the concept of drama, 4 different themes regarding the opinions on drama and education, 4 different themes regarding the learning outcomes that the drama observed by the leaders for the children, 4 different themes regarding the learning outcomes that the drama should provide to the children, 4 different themes regarding the perspectives of parents on the concept of drama, and 5 different themes regarding the difficulties of drama were revealed.

Play in School - Toward an Ecosystemic Understanding and Perspective.

Based on a design-based research project and long-term observations of children’s play in school, this article develops the concept of play order, which points to interaction, coherence and holistic orientation as central values for the approach to play in school. Through concrete empirical analysis, the article shows how play in school is established and maintained, and how school as context interacts with play, which is often in ways that undermine the space and opportunities play is given. Based on existing research, the article is critical of the tendency to accord a secondary role to play in school or to instrumentalize play as a didactic tool for learning. The article links to existing play theory, but at the same time develops the concept of play order, through an ecosystemic understanding, which makes it possible to look holistically at how play in school can be integrated and provided for. Considering that more and more pedagogues are working in schools and directly involved in teaching, and afterschool clubs (SFO) are increasingly handling schooling tasks, the authors of the article argue that play is worthy of recognition in both practice and theory.

Szorstki i chropowaty dotyk – o dramaturgii zmysłów

Today, the concept of dramaturgy refers primarily to the space of theater or, more broadly, to performative arts. But as the concept of drama has passed into the scientific discourse of sociology, anthropology or literary studies, so is it with dramaturgy. The understanding that appears here refers to its meaning as a special tension on the level of sensually experienced and perceived artistic events. The subject of interest here is the dramatic aesthetics of experience in the field of performing and visual arts. The aesthetic categories related to the senses are often of a physical origin and amorphous in nature. The roughness and harshness of the title in their origin are physical categories that can be experienced primarily through the sense of touch. In this intertwining of senses, we are talking about their dramaturgy, because they cannot usually be separated from each other and various works appeal to touch and other senses at the same time. The process of creating a work and its reception is an action, process, meeting, the playwright of which is both the creator / creator and the recipient. The considerations concern changes in the perception of the senses, from the glorification of the sense of sight to the ennoblement of the “lower” senses, the place and function of the classical and interactive museum and haptic art, as well as the polysensory and immersive reception designed in performance and theater.

An evaluation of the dramatic aesthetics of Ikenge and Ifejioku festivals of Ossissa people of Delta State

This paper evaluates the dramatic aesthetics of the Ikenge and Ifejioku festivals of Ossissa people of Ndokwa-East Local Government Area of Delta State, Nigeria. The study, which is a survey of the performance tradition, critically analyses the controversy surrounding the views of African dramatic scholars (the evolutionists and the relativists) on the question of what constitutes drama in the context of Nigerian traditional performances. This controversy arose as a result of Aristotle’s concept of drama with its emphasis on imitation, plot, dialogue, conflict, etc. Based on this concept, Ruth Finnegan describes the indigenous festival traditions in Africa as “quasi-dramatic phenomena” that lack the Western dramatic structures. While the evolutionist school of thought argues that the traditional festivals are not drama but rituals, the relativist school claims that the traditional festivals in Africa can be considered as dramatic performances since most of the features of drama such as music and dance, audience participation, costumes, stage, etc., are present in the festival traditions. The study employs a field work-oriented methodology, involving participatory observation of the festivals, interviews, documentary analysis, audio records, and photographs of scenes and events. The findings of the study confirm that traditional African festivals are indeed dramatic performances. The study concludes that the African traditional performance mode is indigenous to African people and must not necessarily mirror the Western model. The paper, therefore, submits that the Ikenge and Ifejioku festivals of Ossissa can be seen as complete drama just like any other Western dramatic forms.

Norwidowski dramat „transfiguracji społecznych”

Artykuł zawiera rozważania na temat Norwidowskiej koncepcji dramatu i teatru, zakładającej ich ścisły związek z życiem społecznym i jego historycznymi przemianami. Analizy wypowiedzi metadramatycznych i metateatralnych poety, czyli przede wszystkim szkicu Widowiska w ogóle uważane, Białych kwiatów, fragmentów wykładów O Juliuszu Słowackim oraz przedmowy do Pierścienia Wielkiej-Damy, dostarczają szeregu argumentów na rzecz tezy o intencjonalnym kształtowaniu przez Norwida dramaturgii osnutej wokół idei „transfiguracji społecznych”. Co więcej, charakter jego dorobku dramatopisarskiego pozwala na zastosowanie w interpretacji poszczególnych dziełantropologiczno-socjologicznych kategorii dramatu społecznego i widowiska kulturowego. Większość utworów dramatycznych Norwida unaocznia bowiem sytuację przemiany społecznej, ujętej w ramy obrzędów przejścia i steatralizowanych praktyk społecznych (społeczne ceremonie, rytuały interakcyjne). Dzięki temu Norwidowski dramat staje się artystyczną reprezentacją sił działających w przestrzeni życia zbiorowego, narzędziem ich rozumienia w duchu antropologii społecznej, a także ważnym czynnikiem formowania człowieka.

Pelatihan Manajemen Skit Untuk Jemaat Gereja Kristus Yesus Serpong


 Kegiatan acara-acara keagamaan seperti hari perayaan Natal dan Paskah di gereja seringkali menggunakan pertunjukan drama dalam penyampaian pesan rohani kepada jemaatnya, pesan rohani dalam bentuk drama pendek atau disebut skit lebih mudah diterima oleh jemaat dewasa maupun anak-anak sehingga pesan yang disampaikan dapat diserap oleh seluruh jemaat. Hal ini dirasakan menjadi suatu kebutuhan bagi gereja agar mempersiapkan sumberdaya manusia (SDM) yang berbakat, trampil dan memiliki keahlian dalam membuat drama pendek ini sehingga pimpinan dan panitia Gereja meminta pelatihan dari Universitas Pelita Harapan, Karawaci untuk memberikan workshop “Strategi Perencanaan dan Pelatihan Manajemen Skit untuk Jemaat Gereja Kristus Yesus, Serpong” sebagai bekal bagi aktivis, pengurus dan Hamba Tuhan di gereja tersebut dalam bentuk Kegiatan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat ini. Workshop ini dilakukan atas permintaan Team Kreatif Pembinaan Gereja Kristus Yesus dengan tujuan untuk mengembangkan kemampuan mereka dalam membuat drama singkat yang dapat dipakai dalam pelayanan pada semua komisi baik Sekolah Minggu, Komisi Remaja dan Pemuda, Komisi Kaleb dan Jemaat umum. Pelatihan dilakukan setiap sabtu selama 4 kali pertemuan. Pertemuan pertama: membahas dasar-dasar teori estetika dan konsep drama sebagai sebuah karya seni serta contoh-contoh video yang berkaitan dengan drama pendek. Pertemuan kedua: berupa penerapan strategi dan perencanaan manajemen membuat drama singkat (skit). Selanjutnya pada pertemuan ketiga dan keempat merupakan praktek langsung yang meliputi sutradara, acting, sarana pendukung tarian dan tehnik make up dan tata panggung. Kegiatan ini ditanggapi positif oleh peserta dan didukung LPPM UPH. Peserta memiliki tambahan pengetahuan dasar tentang manajemen skit, perencanaan, dan strategi membuat skit yang efektif dan efisien dalam pelayanan di gereja. Selepas pelatihan mahasiswa mempraktekkan membuat drama singkat sesuai dengan petunjuk yang diberikan dalam acara-acara keagamaan gereja.

Revealing “beauty” in modern Chinese theatre: Max Reinhardt as an anti-Ibsenite emperor in Yu Shangyuan’s translation

ABSTRACT Traditionally, the Chinese indigenous theatre did not require a director. In 1924, Yu Shangyuan published two articles on the prominent modern theatre director Max Reinhardt, “Xianzai Niuyue de Laiyinhate” (Reinhardt in Today’s New York) and “Laiyinhate de “Qiji’” (Reinhardt’s The Miracle), offering Chinese readers a rare glimpse into the Western theatre directing system. Existing scholarship tends to regard the two articles as original works. The present paper argues that they were composed mainly of “unmarked translations” rendered from four foreign works. Anchored by this observation, this paper gives a detailed study of these two articles, covering the incentives for translation, the translation results, and the reasons behind the results. It unveils Yu Shangyuan’s orientation of theatre director as an artist-director instead of an administrator, presents his reconstruction of Max Reinhardt’s image as an “anti-Ibsenite emperor,” and discloses the relevance of his textual strategies to his artistic view. It demonstrates that Yu Shangyuan, influenced by the vision of “aesthetic drama,” purposely reshaped the image of Max Reinhardt so as to spread the gospel of a new conception of drama, that is, drama should purport mainly to afford the aesthetic experience, or reveal “beauty,” as Yu Shangyuan termed it.

Tragedy According to Jacobus Pontanus and the Tradition of Antiquity

The aim of this study is to present the findings of a comparative analysis that covers—on the one hand—the theory of tragedy presented in Poeticarum institutionum libri III by Jakob Pontanus (Spanmuller), the classical and Renaissance poetics and commentaries on which he based his work, as well as the ancient tragedies that belonged to the literary canon in Jesuit colleges, and—on the other hand—Pontanus’s theoretical approach mentioned above and his tragedy Elezarus Machabaeus. The works of Pontanus have previously been discussed by Joseph Bielmann. However, Bielmann did not present them against the background of the Greek and Roman tragedies or the statements of the ancient theorists on drama, the Renaissance theoretical reflection on tragedies, or the playwriting practice resulting from this reflection. Consequently, his characterisation of the Elezarus Machabaeus is untenable, and his comments on Pontanus’s theory of drama need reviewing. Determining whether Pontanus respected the rules of ancient tragedy or whether he openly violated them is important because he was one of the most outstanding Jesuit humanists and a person of authority in his community. If we take into account the fact that Elezarus Machabaeus was the first tragedy printed by the Jesuits, the Poeticarum institutionum libri tres was one of the first printed Jesuit textbooks of this kind, and Pontanus himself was also the author of other books recommended for reading in Jesuit colleges and participated in the work of the committee for the evaluation and approval of the Jesuit school act, his views on the imitation of ancient models should be considered influential at least to a moderate degree and at least in some literary circles of his time. This matter is addressed in the introductory part of this paper. It also contains a short presentation of Pontanus’s textbook against the background of other Jesuit poetics, as well as of his main sources in the field of drama theory. Subsequently, the author presents Pontanus’s concept of drama and then discusses his piece taking into account the context of ancient and contemporary drama theory and practice of writing. In the light of this comparative reading, Eleazarus Machabaeus seems to be generally based on ancient models despite certain peculiarities, such as the composition and absence of choruses, which may be surprising at first. Both Pontanus’s tragedy and his theoretical approach should be regarded as classical in nature.

“Life we must accept as we see it” – A critical Reading of Joyce’s “Drama and Life”

James Joyce’s fictional works have been vastly analyzed and discussed ever since the first decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, only recently there has been a consistent growth of the critical attention given to Joyce’s essayistic production. One of the most emblematic essays written by Joyce is “Drama and Life”, from 1900. It is precisely in this essay that Joyce introduces and develops concepts ­– such as Joyce’s concept of drama – that would eventually turn out to be of paramount importance to the unfolding and to the understanding of his work as a whole. This article aims to critically analyze “Drama and Life” and hopefully provide enough evidence to support the hypotheses that Joyce’s conceptualization of drama is based upon basically essentialist premises and that these very premises have foundational importance for the development Joyce’s fictional work. The ideas on Joyce’s essayistic output, as well as on “Drama and Life” itself, posited by Caetano W. Galindo, Richard Ellmann, Sergio Medeiros, and Andrew Gibson are used as theoretical basis for the development of the article.

Семантика театра в повести И. С. Тургенева После смерти (Клара Милич)

The article presents an attempt of interpretation of the last story by Turgenev from the point of view of theatre as a specific cultural and social phenomenon. This approach enables us 1) to distinguish between concepts of drama and tragedy as they are used in the text and metatext of the story; 2) to get out of the text’s boundaries and to involve biographical and historical contexts to the analysis.

Satyr Play and Plato's Triadic Conception of Drama

Satyr Play and Plato's Triadic Conception of Drama

And Here's Your Host…: Jews and Others in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament

This essay examines the remarkable late-medieval English dramatic work known as the Croxton Play of the Sacrament—an ambivalent parochial re-interpretation of the Continental genre of the ‘host desecration play’. It suggests that the conventions, ideas and even the characters of the play are curiously distinct from those of the surviving, strongly antisemitic European plays, having seemingly undergone a sea change in the course of their journey from central Germany, Italy and France to rural East Anglia. The essay explores the potentially radical implications of the play's conception of its Jewish characters, and of the central figure of Jonathas in particular, arguing that, while the playwright was not consciously seeking to question, still less to undermine, conventional assumptions about the nature and role of the Jews in Christian theology, the net effect of his dramatic experiments was to set those traditions on their heads.

Dramatisk teologi – en introduktion af Raymund Schwager

This article introduces the Swiss/Austrian catholic theologian Raymund Schwager (1935-2004) to a Danish audience. It is argued that Schwager’s dramatic theology offers a coherent model for interpreting the paradoxes in Christian faith. How can God be described as both constructive and deconstructive, as both merciful and full of anger? Combining Hans Urs von Balthasar’s conception of drama and René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire and scapegoating, Schwager formulates a theology, where the vertical aspects of reconciliation do not overshadow the horizontal aspects, and viceversa. The action of God in Christ meets human reaction in a balanced way. The drama contains five acts: 1. Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God; 2. The rejection of Jesus’ preaching; 3. The judgment of Jesus and his crucifixion; 4. Resurrection as the reaction of the Father; 5. The new gathering. The perspective, provided by the drama, makes it possible to integrate themes, which otherwise seem without any relation, for in the drama, as well in our lives, everything is interrelated and interdependent. A dramatic view on the revelation thus clarifies how action is succeeded by reaction: God speaks and human beings respond.

Amor nello specchio (1622): Mirroring, Masturbation, and Same-Sex Love

Amor nello specchio (1622):Mirroring, Masturbation, and Same-Sex Love Emily Wilbourne (bio) The literal translation of Amor nello specchio is "love in the mirror," although "love reflected" provides a better sense of the phrase's meaning. The play by that name was first published in Paris by Giovan Battista Andreini in 1622 and has recently come to occupy a remarkable position in the work of scholars and theater practitioners.1 The magnetic pull of this particular text is attributable to the twists and turns of the commedia plot. The main character, Florinda, is initially in love with her own reflection. After some time she transfers her affections to the beautiful Lidia, and by the end of the play she has settled on Lidia's identical twin brother, Eugenio, a self-described hermaphrodite played by a woman in drag. This romp through variously configured sexual relations is fascinating for its frank depictions of female sexuality—Florinda consummates each of her three love affairs—and also for an ending that remains sexually and delightfully ambiguous despite the specter of resolution into compulsory heterosexuality. At the same time, the "real-world" backdrop to the play's performance and publication complicates further the shifting erotic allegiances staged as Amor nello specchio. The playwright, Giovan Battista, was both author and actor, although his character, Lelio, filled a fairly minor role. In this play Lelio is sharply rejected by a self-obsessed Florinda and after a failed attempt at seduction by magical incantation abandons the feminine temptations of romantic love in favor of a career in the military. Not only Lelio but all [End Page 54] the male characters of this play are shunted sideways, with the dramatic interest of Amor nello specchio securely centered on the female characters. The lead, Florinda, was played by Virginia Ramponi Andreini, wife of Giovan Battista and a renowned singer and actress in her own right, while her onstage lovers, Lidia and the (male) hermaphrodite, Eugenio, were both played by her husband's real-life lover, Virginia Rotari.2 In performance, then, the shifting sexual configurations of Amor nello specchio embodied and reconstituted the scandalous ménage à trois of the actors' offstage love lives. Add to this an onstage masturbation scene, some cross-dressing, and the temporal interval of nearly four hundred years that separates the early modern play from our postmodern moment, and it is clear why this text proved and proves so fascinating. Previous scholarship has valued Amor nello specchio for the compelling exegetical unfolding of male fantasies of female sexuality, with Siro Ferrone's Attori mercanti corsari (1993) and Piermario Vescovo's "Narciso, Psiche e Marte 'mestruato.' Una lettura di Amor nello specchio di Giovan Battista Andreini" (2004) the most notable examples.3 Understood thus, Giovan Battista's stylistic maturity is achieved at the expense of his female companions, with the characters of Florinda and Lidia repeatedly understood to ventriloquize the artistic product of a male author. Amor nello specchio is seen as both symptom of and transcendent signifier for Giovan Battista's extramarital affair: literary mastery routed through the penis. This model of reception is present also in the program notes of the two modern stagings the work has received, both directed by Luca Ronconi (1987 and 2002), and in a 1999 Italian film entitled Amor nello specchio, a period drama very loosely based around the play and on the historico-biographical circumstances that preceded its publication. 4 The film was directed by Salvatore Maira, who, with Anna Michela Borracci, published a modern edition of the original play in 1997; the edition includes an introduction by Maira that lightly revises an article first published in 1994.5 The film exists, therefore, in a weird historiographic relationship with the 1622 text and with modern scholarship on the work, functioning as an attempt to imagine and explain the conditions of the play's conception. In contrast with these authors and directors, my interest lies elsewhere. In relation to the improvised practice and formulaic conventions of commedia dell'arte performance, questions of authorship are inherently problematic.6 Stock characters were the norm, and each actor brought a repertoire of gestures, sounds, and phrases to his or her performance...

The Megamusical (review)

Reviewed by: The Megamusical Gloria Dossett The Megamusical. By Jessica Sternfeld. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006; pp. xi + 441. $29.95 cloth. Some books lead readers to surmise that they are reading the last word on a given subject. Rarely, however, does one have the pleasure of running across the first word in what is bound to be a lively debate. Jessica Sternfeld's The Megamusical provides just such a delight. Sternfeld approaches Broadway musicals from the perspective of a "lifelong musical theatre fan" and an accomplished musicologist. She argues, persuasively, that almost no serious musicological scholarship exists on the megamusicals—those Broadway behemoths that rose to prominence during the 1970s and have dominated the playing field for three decades. By approaching the subject from both historical and musicological perspectives, with The Megamusical Sternfeld provides a good starting point for that scholarship. Significantly, she does so by striking an excellent balance between theorized analyses of the music and lively storytelling. The author defines a "megamusical" as a musical theatre production of massive proportions, which includes complicated sets and costumes, large casts, and creative advanced-marketing strategies. Megamusicals often have European roots in terms of authorship and subject matter and are usually set in the past. By design, the megamusical grapples with epic yet emotionally basic ideas for ease of transfer to foreign cultures, tends to be sung throughout without spoken dialogue, and is almost universally panned by critics and Sondheim fans alike. In her introduction, Sternfeld throws down the gauntlet to professional theatre critics, claiming that their general dismissal of the megamusicals has played a role in their relatively diminished sphere of influence. I was prepared for a populist argument—and I got one. I also found myself reveling in the intricate examination of the music theory at work in key productions, which Sternfeld uses to bolster her argument. She wastes no space on illustrations, asserting that coffee-table books have filled that need. The focus here is on the music. The analysis she provides of representative productions is thorough. I was particularly impressed with her knowledgeable deconstruction of the early Rice / Lloyd Webber scores. One of the strongest aspects of the book, however, is its marvelous collection of historical, archival, and anecdotal information about the shows and their creators. Along with a detailed description of the music theory and theme development in Cats, for example, she includes a description of each major developmental phase of the work such as negotiations with the Eliot estate as well as interesting tidbits such as the fact that the actress first cast as Grisabella in the London production was Judi Dench. In this respect, Sternfeld makes an important contribution to Broadway cultural literacy. The book's organization is roughly chronological. The author begins chapter 1 with an account of the emergence of the writing team of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber and an analysis of their Ur-mega, Jesus Christ Superstar. Sternfeld's critique of this production is anchored in a close reading of the musical score. Initially, when I reached the first few passages of musical scoring, I wondered if I would find these sections indecipherable. With a little effort, however, I found that my generalist's musical education was adequate to the task. Sternfeld deals with the play's concept development, the score's techniques and styles (including the use of musical pastiche and recurring musical themes), the decision to release the album before going into production (along with other significant marketing strategies), the journey to Broadway, and finally, the over-the-top, campy New York production and subsequent falling out between Lloyd Webber and director Tom O'Horgan. Sternfeld carefully lays the groundwork for the conflicting philosophies held by Rice, who loves popular music, and Lloyd Webber, who wishes to be taken seriously as a composer. Later chapters introduce Cameron Mackintosh with Evita, and Trevor Nunn and his colleagues from the Royal Shakespeare Company with Cats and Phantom of the Opera. Sternfeld also includes a fine chapter devoted to Boublil and Shönberg's Les Misérables, which, she suggests, adopts many of the successful techniques of the megamusical. While one might argue that it would be impossible to find...

Artaud & the Concept of Drama in Theology

Artaud & the Concept of Drama in Theology

The Puritan Dialectic of Law and Grace in Bartholomew Fair

Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614) suggests the need for a balance between too much and too little law and between too much and too little discrimination. The historical context of Puritanism, with its emphasis on both grace and disciplined belief, lies at the heart of the play's dialectic; thus the Puritan ideological dilemma of the early modern period must be considered central rather than (satirically) marginal to the play's conception of social behavior. Such a consideration leads to a recognition of a third binary in the play, between too much and too little idealization, suggesting that Bartholomew Fair is more closely connected with issues of gendered identity and social control of sexuality than has yet been recognized.

Friedrich de la Motte Fouqués Nibelungen-Trilogie ‘Der Held des Nordens’: Studien zu Stoff, Struktur und Rezeption by Wolf Gerhard Schmidt, and: Jahrbuch der Fouqué-Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg 2000 ed. by Julia Bertschik (review)

MLRy 98.4, 2003 1047 In two essays on Der Findling, Bettina Knauer points to the role ofmasks and the use of asthetischerScheinin Nicolo's construction of his identity,while IngeborgHarms uses a Marxist theory of the significance of exchange and the psychoanalytic notion of 'incorporation ' forher interpretation ofthe text as an exploration of exhausted authority. What of Kleist's drama? For Gerhard Kurz, Amphitryon represents, when read in Goethean terms as 'ein "gegenwartiges Drama"', not the power, but the impotence of God ('alter Vater Jupiter', as Merkur calls him) under the conditions of modernity. Three essays deal with Penthesilea: for Joachim Pfeiffer,the play shows how Kleist saw literature as the opportunity to imagine the dissolution of social, and above all gender, identities; Maximilian Nutz points out how the question of gender identity affectedthe reception of the work in aesthetic terms, and takes early twentieth-century criticism to task forreading Kleist 'vor dem Hintergrund sehr zeitbedingter Diskurse' (p. 222); and Gabriele Brandstetter questions the function of catharsis in the play, calling for an 'aesthetics of disgust'. Dagmar Ottman argues that, in Der Prinz von Homburg, Kleist's engagement with classicism led to a 'metonymic' style (demon? strated with reference to the role of such stage props as the giove), while Alexander von Bormann, comparing the play with Lessing's Philotas, sees it as a 'drama of adolescence'. Finally, in relation to Das Kdthchen von Heilbronn, Oesterle extends Max Kommerell's observation, 'Kleist liebt die Verhore', into an interpretation of Kathchen as a 'schone Seele' as conceived by Christoph Martin Wieland. This is a rich collection of essays (lacking only an index), and it will surely be an indispensable reference point for all future Kleist scholars. University of Glasgow Paul Bishop Friedrich de la Motte Fouques Nibelungen-Trilogie 'Der Held des Nordens': Studien zu Stoff, Struktur und Rezeption. By Wolf Gerhard Schmidt. (Saarbriicker Beitragezur Literaturwissenschaft, 68) St Ingbert: Rohrig. 2000. 333 pp. ?27. ISBN 3-86110-239-0 (hbk). Jahrbuch der Fouque-Gesellschaft Berlin-Brandenburg 2000. Ed. by Julia Bertschik. Berlin: Weidler. 2000. 124 pp. ?16.50. ISBN 3-89693-155-5 (pbk). At long last Fouque's Der Held des Nordens has received the attention it deserves. In a 'Nachbemerkung' Wolf Gerhard Schmidt tells us that his welcome study of this strangely neglected yet fascinating work is a slightly revised version of a Saarbrucken Magisterarbeit; his acknowledgements also make it clear that it owes a good deal to the advice and encouragement he received during a postgraduate year at Cambridge. The result is as impressive as it is ambitious. Towards the end (p. 220) Schmidt quotes a telling pronouncement by Helfrich Pe? ter Sturz. Writing in 1782, Sturz maintained: 'die alte nordische Geschichte gehort uns zu [. . .] sie ist dem Dichter der das wahre Erhabene fuhlt, fast mehr als die Griechische wert'. It was a line of thought which Fouque followed up with considerable success during a significant phase of the Napoleonic Wars, but which Wagner alone was able to transmute into high art. Curiously, Schmidt withholds the section he entitles 'Fouque's Studium der altnordischen Sagen', which one might have expected to find closer to 'Die Quellenfrage' (pp. 31-8), until pages 236-46, and chooses to discuss his concept of drama, in the Held des Nordens trilogy, the critical reception it received from contemporaries, and the themes and ideas which constitute its 'fic? tional cosmos', before turning his attention to what may well be considered its most significant aspect: Fouque's fascination with Germanic mythology and the way he presents it to his age. Schmidt's useful bibliography extends from p. 283 to p. 315, though it is rather disconcerting to see Carlyle's French Revolution (1837) given only 1048 Reviews as Die Franzosische Revolution (Leipzig, 1915) and to discover that, rather unhelpfully ,his own study is not provided with an index. A reader wondering where exactly Fouque and his Held des Nordens trilogy stand in relation to, say, Oehlenschager or, for that matter, William Morris must hope to chance upon the latter's names. To his surprise, this reviewer chanced on neither. Wagner of course could not be overlooked. Though the composer never mentions Der Held des...