Dramatic Form Research Articles

Theatre and Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form

Theatre and Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form

Abdominal Trauma by Impalement. Clinical case.

Introduction: Impalement injury is one of the most spectacular and potentially dramatic rare forms of penetrating trauma. [2,3] In many cases, the impaled patient dies at the scene.[3] The patient who manages to reach the hospital alive and is hemodynamically stable has a good chance of overcoming a traumatic event. However, the non-removal of a foreign object represents the cornerstone of initial treatment, as possible vascular lesions remain compressed by the object in situ, thus avoiding irrepressible hemorrhages. Clinical case: A 32-year-old male was brought in by a paramedic after suffering electrical burns to the right thoracic limb and right pelvic limb that caused a fall from a power pole with subsequent penetrating abdominal trauma due to impalement. He denies antecedents of importance for the current condition. Upon arrival, he was hemodynamically stable, with the presence of a first-degree electrical burn in the right hand and forearm and the right thigh, as well as a metallic rod passing through the abdomen from the left groin to the right flank, for which it was decided to perform Exploratory Laparotomy who reported the following findings: Intestinal perforation of more than 50% of the lumen at jejunum level, side-to-side anastomosis was performed. During his stay on the floor of General Surgery, he had a torpid post-surgical evolution, intolerance to the oral route, abdominal distension, absence of gas channeling, and symptoms of intestinal obstruction, for which it was decided to perform a new Exploratory Laparotomy, finding intestinal stenosis at the level of the previous anastomosis was dismantled and reconstructed in side by side, on this occasion with favorable evolution and he was discharged due to improvement after 14 days of hospital stay. Discussion: Prehospital emergency medicine (PHEM) offers unique and challenging perspectives to orthodox emergency medicine. Impalements are extremely rare and often require a multidisciplinary team approach in the prehospital setting. Most cases of impalements are fatal at the scene. Patients surviving the initial trauma and arriving at the hospital alive, usually make a good recovery with multidisciplinary team management underpinning the importance of meticulous prehospital care in transporting patients with impalements safely. This case highlights the role of PHEM clinicians as experts in clinical knowledge, decision-making, leadership, team working skills, and improvisations.

The Influence of the Drama "My Mother, My Exclusive Breastfeeding Hero" on the Motivation of Exclusive Breastfeeding

Health education and promotion actions have been carried out at the Simpang Periuk Health Center, Lubuklinggau City by health workers, but in practice the percentage of mothers who do exclusive breastfeeding has not reached 80%. It is necessary to hold health promotion innovations in the form of drama games to touch the hearts of breastfeeding mothers so that awareness arises and strong motivation is formed to pass exclusive breastfeeding. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the drama "My Mother, My Exclusive ASI Hero" on the motivation to give exclusive breastfeeding to breastfeeding mothers in the work area of ​​Simpang Periuk Health Center, Lubuklinggau City. The research method used is a quasi-experimental without a control group. The sample used was 33 breastfeeding mothers with the age of the baby not exceeding 6 months by accidental sampling. The results of the Wilcoxon test showed that there was a difference in the mean value of exclusive breastfeeding motivation before and after the drama was given (p=0.000). so it could be concluded that there was a significant increase in the motivation for exclusive breastfeeding before and after the drama was given. Suggestions to the Puskesmas to be able to use the drama "My Mother is My Exclusive ASI Hero" as a method of health promotion

The Left Behind: Precarity, Place and Racial Identity in the Contemporary ‘Serious Drama’

After the channel's initial rebranding as a streaming-only platform in 2016, BBC Three produced a number of critically successful single dramas which marry the broadcaster's public service remit with the channel's youth-centred identity and new mode of delivery. These programmes continued the tradition of the ‘serious drama’, adopting the single play format in order to represent contemporary social problems via the experiences of younger people. The 2019 drama The Left Behind is an example of this recent form of serious drama and is the subject of a case study in this article. Set in a former mining town in Wales, The Left Behind's subject matter addresses the intersection between the precarity found in Britain's post-industrial regions and the rise of hate crime and nationalist sentiment in recent years. This article asserts that, faced with the often essentialising frameworks through which this intersection and its terms have been produced, The Left Behind offers a complex imagining of how race, geography and precarity inform each other. In particular, the article pays close attention to the drama's textural construction of space and place. I consider how space and place are represented as the material sites in which the tensions of post-industrial classed and ethnicised identities are experienced, and I suggest that it is The Left Behind's particular engagement with space, made possible by its existence as an online serious drama, that allows it to convey these dynamic tensions.

An analysis of existentialism and the unconventional theme of absurdity in the ludicrous plays of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco

This essay explores how Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot ignore the tropes of conventional theatre and examines how ludicrous these plays are. In Paris, the absurd drama movement grew. During the time, France was regarded as the global hub for art. The discord between humanity and the outside world is depicted in absurd drama, which defies the established forms of conventional drama, which have a tradition with deep roots. The ludicrous drama minimises all the visually appealing and delicate features on stage. Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, and Arthur Adamov are the most well-known dramatists who critique traditional play and its components in their works, either directly or indirectly, and make them challenging while attempting to reveal their unique understanding of theatre.

Ozu in 2.5D

“Ozu’s films are comparable to deep, clear water, perfectly still.” (Maurice Pinguet). The simplicity of Ozu’s images is perfectly apparent. It is in the transparency of these lines that the true depth of his films is played out: Everything happens as if we were dealing with the most natural, most common world, and yet from the outset we notice a lapse—the characters move in an artificial way, their expression is always missing, they seem to float, between presence and absence. This pan.able is an invitation to meditate at the borders between visual arts and the psychology of perception. To think this in-between, between the 2D of the image and the 3D of reality, the 2.5D can be understood both as a new approach to perspective construction and as a specific relationship to the world. In the sense of perspective, the Ozuian image does not seem to be constructed linearly according to the rules of the vanishing point that unify a homogeneous and structured space. Rather, it is constructed according to a principle of superimposed layers, like cartoons. The pan.able shows the passage from an image as a section of the real to an image as a recomposition of the real, from a conception of unified space to a conception of stratified space. Metaphorically, this in-between time of 2.5D reveals that behind the purity and serenity of Ozu’s images a form of drama is at play: the character haunts the world more than he inhabits it. He is in the lining. He is no longer a singular character in a fiction, but a prototype, an idea: There Was a Father, in reference to the title of another Ozu film. The procedure of the pan.able enables us to appreciate this disconnect of the real space and its substitution by an artificial and stratified image. It gives the impression of both looking at a fun flip book and facing a ghost, escaped from its body, lost in its own reverie. Between an amused tenderness and a sensory reflexivity, this is precisely where Ozu’s films take place, between the surface and the depth, between presence and absence, between the singular and the typical—in this in-between space of the 2.5D.

Intertekstualnost u drami Dva plemenita rođaka

The central plot of Fletcher and Shakespeare's play The Two Noble Kinsmen derives from Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, so it could be interpreted through the theory of intertextuality and transtextuality. The prototext of these literary works is identical, but it has been modified over the centuries. It has changed from a mythological story into a universal symbol of love, friendship, authority, honor, and death. Apart from the permutation of texts by different authors, The Two Noble Kinsmen is also a curious collection of Shakespeare's earlier works, despite the frequent contestation of his contribution to this play. Such self-citation is an interesting phenomenon, especially if we consider the fact that this play is Shakespeare's last work and not The Tempest, as traditionally stated in literary histories. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the similarities and differences between Chaucer's famous story and Fletcher and Shakespeare's play, to point out the degree of intertextuality in it, and to highlight the original dramatic episodes and characters, their function, meaning, and significance. With the assumption that Fletcher and Shakespeare intentionally and purposefully chose the mode of adaptation and transformation of the famous Chaucer's text, the obtained results indicate that certain elements were modified due to the requirements of the dramatic form and its theatrical function, but also for commercial and socio-political reasons. The transposition of the well-known ancient story into Renaissance England, with new episodes and characters in the subplot, offers a different and somewhat subversive picture of conventional social norms and relations.

A Föld tragédiája : Néhány megjegyzés az éghajlatváltozásról a kortás német nyelvű színházban

This study explores the intersection of climate change and contemporary German-speaking theatre. The paper delves into the challenges posed by climate change and species extinction, emphasizing the need for presenting facts and fostering commitment. Drawing parallels to ancient Greek tragedies, the author examines the dramaturgical potential of political theatre to address the "tragedy of the earth" and instigate essential changes. The study covers various aspects, including the presentation of scientific facts and scenarios, the role of reason and ethics in theatre, the portrayal of Gaia (Earth) on stage, and the call for action in the tradition of Brecht and contemporary theatre. The exploration extends to the use of masks, the evolving nature of postdramatic and post-human theatre, and the challenge of representing nature and Gaia within traditional dramatic forms. The author concludes by discussing the ongoing search for an adequate theatrical form to address the tragedy of climate change and species extinction, emphasizing the role of drama and theatre in helping humanity navigate these challenges.

Historical Perspective of Role System Functioning in the Process of Actor’s Role Image Creation

The purpose of the article is to highlight and characterise the artistic and aesthetic expediency of the role as a way of an actor’s existence in a dramatic theatre in the image of a role in different historical periods. The research methodology consists in using the functional method to determine the cognitive-semantic category of the role in the performer's skill, their pragmatic characteristics as a principle of organising the effectiveness of the actor's artistic creativity over the role. The art history method has been applied to analyse the ideological and aesthetic value of the role method in reproducing the character’s image in a dramatic form. The comparative method enabled the conducting of the comparative analysis of the role performance in the actor’s work and its classification reference by certain criteria. The axiomatic method has been used to generalise the well-established ideas of the creative expediency of using a role in the process of role creating and its artistic value. The cultural and historical method made it possible to understand the criteria of artistry in the performing activity of role masters in different historical periods. The novelty of the research consists in a comprehensive analysis of the role as a way of an actor’s existence in a role, their effectiveness, efficiency, and aesthetic value in the performer’s stage activity of a certain role material. Conclusions. With the advent of reformatory directing, the theatrical art underwent global changes in the structuring of the actor's creative workshop, expanding their range of artistic performance. That artistic performance was specifically aimed at developing the performer’s individuality as a whole, their internal and external technique of stage creativity, and not at emphasising artistry on the actor’s external natural data, which were previously predicted lineage. And this prompted the shifting of the role category as the value of art to the background and approved the artistic playing function as a large-scale performance expression. The role as a way of an actor’s existence in a role loses its centuries-old theatrical practice, but does not leave some types of stage for contemporary theatrical art.
 Key words: actor, theatre, role.

The opportunities and challenges of drama in education in Chinese kindergartens

With the introduction of drama in education and creative drama in China in the late twentieth century, drama in education has become a new practice and research hotspot in the field of education. However, children’s theatre performance and dramatic acting training have for a long time been the main form of Chinese preschool drama education and still have a noticeable impact. In this article, we explore how drama in education can improve and expand Chinese kindergarten teachers’ teaching repertoire and how it can contribute to children’s interpersonal development. This design-based study uses interventions in the form of drama in education workshops in a Chinese kindergarten. By undertaking these workshops, observing workshop participants and interviewing teachers and children, we have found that drama in education supports children’s language learning and helps develop their individual self-awareness. In addition, it also provides multiple new methods of teaching and thus promotes teachers’ individual growth as professionals in the kindergarten classroom. In terms of kindergarten curriculum reform, this study aims to contribute to the current developments and debates about teaching, learning and overall education.

“A Positive Statement of a Negative Thing”: Nietzschean Eternal Recurrence as Dramatic Form in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

Much has been written in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries about the pessimistic tenor of Samuel Beckett’s middle-period plays. With specific reference to Waiting for Godot, however, this essay draws a distinction between the pessimistic appearance of the content that partially constitutes this text and the nature of the formal medium through which it is realized. In short, I argue that there is a critical disjunction between what this play says and what this play does. Conceptually speaking, this essay is primarily concerned with Beckett’s textual engagement with the theory of eternal recurrence, that is, the idea that all occurrences have happened innumerable times before, and will happen again, and again, in an infinitely recurring cycle. Focusing on how Waiting for Godot developed, both in translation and as a performance piece under the direction of its author, I demonstrate that Beckett’s metatheatrical dramatization of eternal recurrence explores this theory’s capacity to function as an ethical imperative in the morally nihilistic atmosphere of post-Holocaust Europe. In doing so, Beckett’s play implicates the viewer in a dramatization that is aligned with the axiological iteration of eternal recurrence that modern and contemporary scholars associate with Friedrich Nietzsche. Indeed, it is in this sense that Waiting for Godot is, as Beckett himself puts it, “a positive statement of a negative thing.”

«Scenarity» as the Basis for the Formation of the Drama Genre in K. Tsepkolenko First Piano Concerto

The article reveals the peculiarities of creating the dramatic form of the Concerto-Drama for Piano and Orchestra. The paper substantiates the principles of dramatization of the composer’s piano concerto from the position of her creative method — her own genre concept, namely “scenario development” of musical material and general stylistic foundations of her creative work. The internal dramatic effect of the concerto is achieved thanks to the through development of musical images in the concerto-drama thanks to thematic bridges that unite all three parts into a single performance, in which the relief and convex script-fabula layers of the work are literally perceptible, revealing to the listener a world of emotions and vivid feelings. The article shows that the composer, developing the concerto genre in a dramatic turn, uses playful methods of form-making to enhance the dramatization of his works. In the orchestra part she widely uses the competitiveness of the individual instruments and orchestra groups, in the climactic moments the texture is saturated by poly-linear multi-layered semantic structures. The composer makes innovative use of piano cadenzas that appear on the crest of the hero’s emotions, appearing in various structural sections of the concerto and serving as unifying material that binds together the dramatic plot of the concerto. The individual project of the work based on the script featured development of the drama is decisive in the composer’s concerto-symphonic works. Here the composer acts as another function that emerged in connection with the application of the script development method, namely that of the director of the musical process, who shapes the musical material taking into account its texture, temporal and spatial forms.

Le jeu de la feuillée d’Adam de la Halle : une sournoise noise contre la pathologie virale de l’idéologie courtoise féodale

The present study provides a better understanding of the affinities between literature and history. This is to say more explicitly that the defects assimilated to viral pathologies which have infected the populations of Arras, the authorities (political, religious, paternal) in particular, are similar to that which the world has known for a few months, to namely the Coronavirus pandemic, also called the COVID-19. The new social order, which the latter requires, justifies the focus on the aristocratic elite who happens to be in perfect connivance with the clergy. The structural or hierarchical rearrangement of social relations accounts for a certain weakening or annihilation of the unconditional supremacy of which this elite claims the prerogative through courtly ideology. The downfall of the said elite infected with viral defects allows Adam de la Halle to initiate, through his main character Adam, a healing odyssey, under the prism of generic subversion. This translates, moreover, in a dramatic form tested positive which rubs shoulders and harmoniously forms one with many other literary genres of the medieval period, considered in turn as contact cases.

Un mal pour un mal : une éthique des conséquences de l’acte guerrier

Julien is a soldier. He opened fire in a warlike, heroic act. However, this act has become unbearable because of his peers’ gaze and the traumatic repetition syndrome he has suffered from ever since. This clinical vignette illustrates in its most dramatic form the soldier's deadly commitment, namely in his relationship to death, both the one he is likely to administer and the one he is prepared to receive. Thus, the soldier finds himself “at the heart of the dialectic of life and death”: the life of the civilian population to be protected whatever the cost, the death of the enemy, which he must inflict, or even his own death, which he is ready to receive in this same commitment that he has made. This leads to a cult of bravery, the “heroisation” of the individual who transgresses an unconditional law of human existence, that of not killing one's neighbor. To survive, the soldier conforms body and soul to the very meaning of the military code of ethics, which is defined by a rigorous discipline, a flawless process of toughening up designed for the acquisition of both an unwavering body and psyche… And yet the fall of the hero is not without fracas. The traumatic question, of which many soldiers are victims on their return from difficult missions, directs the subject's return to this essential question of death, the one felt in his own body, or in the reflection of that which he inflicts on his aggressor. Then, the reality of the shot received or the shot dispensed leaves the individual with an unbearable, unspeakable pain, immobilizing him in an experience of dehumanization that he had not anticipated. Also, the concretization of warlike conduct, although “trivialized’ in its usual manifestations, comes as a surprise to the soldier in the carrying out of the act for which he has prepared with so much effort, thereby questioning its validity as well as its moral scope.

Le langage de l’addiction, une clinique de l’agir

Language is one of the defining characteristics of man. His ability to name things allows him to represent them. If subjectivity guarantees humanity in each person, what happens when words and the symbolization they allow are missing? In addiction, the act of consuming takes the place of an emotion or a thought, which the person thus avoids, by finding a kind of immediate satisfaction. It corresponds to an externalization of our internal theater. This action can be used as a representational support for psychic conflicts when language falters in this mission. Beside the immediate discharge of tension, the action forms then an expressive digression, which can nevertheless remain unheeded if it is not interpreted in its symbolic value. To consider the action of addiction only as a problematic behavior to be normalized is then a form of drama, and at the same time a voice screaming at the other and remaining deaf to itself. Addiction can thus be considered as an acted language, waiting to be translated. Beyond the behavior that challenges us, addiction can be rich in meaning. The action-oriented clinic, as developed by F. Marty, allows us to hear and understand this language. Therefore, on the one hand, it is a question of organizing the entire addictology clinic around the stakes, expectations, and contributions of the consumption of psychoactive products. On the other hand, it is necessary to find a form of intentionality in addictive behaviors, allowing the person to finally feel that they are the owner of their own experience. Addiction does not belong exclusively to the disease. In what way will the person use consumption to express or show, through this act of consumption, something that they cannot express in any other way, to themself, to their relatives, or to the institutions. The use by these patients, who are often doubly victims of narcissistic-identitarian sufferings, of the affect, the body and motricity constitutes a privileged register of expression to try to communicate. These are forms of narration to be welcomed as such. It is thus that the action, in this clinic, amply exceeds the question of consumption and can be understood as an interpellation, a provocation. The action-oriented clinic consists, therefore, also in finding the means of addressing those to whom they are intended. During psychotherapy, the analysis of countertransference constitutes a canvas on which representations can be drawn, formulations can be woven. The way of positioning oneself within the framework of psychotherapy, in particular, is very rich. The framework is a medium for projections. Therapists can detect subtle variations for each patient. The patient's posture during treatment, the body language during the session, the missed appointments, the forgetfulness, but also the actions taken outside in their everyday life, the accidents, the missed actions, acting-out. constitute a prelanguage, waiting to be put into words, to fully take on their value of resolution. Any action would indeed testify to an attempt at signifying connection. Also, the narration of factual elements of daily life, projects, conflicts with relatives, speech, boredom, revolt, opinions, encounters, failures, images, sensations... finally, everything that is said, acted upon, shown and shared in the session, is felt by the therapist and brings forth various psychic representations in their thinking, which they then proposes to the patient in the form of interpretative hypotheses, in order to relaunch the associative chains, at the start in this protected space.

Applying a cancer model to the generation of writing for performance: Finding (creative) life in death

This paper outlines the creative experiment that led to the composition of Self Portrait / In Cross-Sections / With Bird, writing designed for theatrical performance. The paper sets this experiment within a critical framework that theorises a textual system. The textual system utilises the organismic dynamics of systems biology to delineate the dwelling within and shaping of imaginative spaces that results from the act of writing. Using practice-based research, the experiment seeks to investigate how biological processes might be used to generate innovations in dramatic form by analysing the implementation of one distinct biological process – the generation and proliferation of cancer. Specifically, by applying a model of composition derived from cancer biology to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it is theorised that a dramaturgy essentially cancerous in nature might emerge. A cancerous mode of composition is realised through the transcription or copying of a foundational Hamlet text, a process which models DNA replication and which allows for a proliferation of mutation errors. The rapid and unchecked accumulation of transcription errors simulates the destructive energy of cancer, embodying the tension between chaos and order by which cancer is characterised. What emerges from the experiment are insights into the relationship between (creative) life and death within a cancerous mode of creative composition. By extrapolating from cancer to biological processes more broadly, the paper argues that a biological mode of composition – one which is alert to the inherent energy of the textual system – can enhance our understanding of the mutual emergence of character, author and text.

Structuring the benchmarks of artistic and creative motivation for creating a stage image of a role by an actor in a drama theatre

The purpose of the article. Determination of the structure of the main guidelines of artistic and creative motivation in the process of creating a stage image of a role by an actor in a drama theatre. The research methodology consists of the use of systemic, art history, analytical, structural, and functional methods of researching the main guidelines in organizing the creative process of transforming the performer of the role actor into a certain stage image in accordance with the subject of his creative activity in the theatrical production, which is directly represented by the character of the dramatic work. Research novelty. For the first time, the structuring of the conceptual and categorical basis of guidelines for artistic and creative motivation of professional requirements for creating a stage image by an actor in a drama theatre has been carried out. Conclusions. At present, the fundamental scientific-theoretical method of consistency in building the structuring of the process of an actor's work on a stage image, apart from Stanislavsky's orientation system, has not been developed. For the better or not, is a controversial issue, because the creative search for a more effective and universal basis for acting is taking place in modern creative laboratories of theatre artists. So, the process of inventing new original artistic techniques for a stage play, figurative motivations, and the interpretation of a character in a dramatic form remains an incompletely resolved problem for stage artists.
 Key words: theatre, actor, acting, stage image, character, role, character.

Tropes Revisited: Evert Sprinchorn'sIbsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Worksand Recent Historical Research in Ibsen Studies

Tropes Revisited: Evert Sprinchorn's<i>Ibsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Works</i>and Recent Historical Research in Ibsen Studies

Struggles with Dramatic Form in 16th-Century English Biblical Plays

The aim of the article is to pinpoint how 16th-century biblical drama tried to appropriate its genre and medium to carry the reformist message and in what sense the project turned out to be a self-defeating one. The analysis of selected plays from reformed biblical cycles (The Chester Mystery Cycle, play iv; and “The Norwich Grocers’ Play”) and newly composed drama (John Bale’s plays, Lewis Wager’s Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, the anonymous “History of Jacob and Esau”), supported with an over- view of the criticism on the matter, reveals some common tensions in the dramatic texts which may have had their roots in the reformist need to eliminate any room for doubt that a theatrical performance could leave. The conclusion is that, in its attempts at striking the right balance between dramatizing and overt sermonizing, engaging and distancing, as well as providing an immersive experience and discouraging it, post-Reformation Scrip- ture-based drama oscillated between being more effective as a performance or as a carrier of the doctrinal message, with the resulting tendency to subvert either the former or the latter.

The Forms of Michael Field, by LeeAnne M. Richardson

Reviewed by: The Forms of Michael Field by LeeAnne M. Richardson Carolyn Dever (bio) The Forms of Michael Field, by LeeAnne M. Richardson; pp. xi + 282. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, $139.99, $109.00 ebook. In The Forms of Michael Field, LeeAnne M. Richardson situates Michael Field—the composite identity of late-Victorian poets and lovers Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper—at the juncture of new theories of the lyric and of literary form. In their published poetry and verse drama, Michael Field are formally innovative and experimental, as Richardson and previous critics have argued. In this splendid book, Richardson takes this contention in important new directions by centering the poets' authorial signature, "Michael Field," as a formal challenge in its own right, both reflecting and overdetermining their formal experimentations: "scholarship has not fully accounted for the inextricably linked nature of their corporate identity and their literary forms" (2). The poets deploy "Michael Field" as a challenge to ideas of authorship and the lyric "I," and as a manifestation of their larger poetic project on par with their remaking of familiar lyric forms including sonnets, songs, and masques. As Richardson writes, Michael Field's "formal innovations originate in their engagement with and modifications, reinterpretations, and adaptations of their larger social world. For these reasons, a study of Michael Field is necessarily a study of a wide array of literary and social forms at the turn of the twentieth century" (4). For critics, the "Michael Field" proposition requires an unusual flexibility, precisely because Michael Field admit no neat pretense of separation between the literary and the social, notwithstanding the poets' continuous engagement with Aestheticist tenets. Michael Field thus engender (pun intended) a formal challenge to critical praxis as well. For to study Michael Field, Richardson contends, is to study the institutions of authorship [End Page 468] and literature as linked, formal phenomena, the poets rewriting the profile of authorship in the world as they reshape the lyric modes at the heart of their project. Richardson's organization reflects this interdependency, opening with an important consideration of "the significance of the Michael Field persona as a mode of selffashioning and a means of negotiating alternatives to traditional gender norms" and "relat[ing] Michael Field's self-authoring to their authorship, demonstrating how their conscious negotiations of self and form provides them personal and literary authority." Subsequent chapters address how Michael Field manage the commingling of personal and literary authority through negotiations of form across lyric modes. Richardson focuses on two dramatic verse forms, verse tragedy and masque, and on three lyric forms: the song, sonnet, and devotional poem. The chapters proceed chronologically as a means of examining Michael Field's "evolving experiments in adapting traditional forms to contemporary concerns." "Each poetic genre they appropriate," Richardson argues, "explores another way to represent poetic voice and identity, both of which provide ways for Bradley and Cooper to express their aesthetic, engage with modernity, and intervene in the world" (20). Richardson's taxonomy here follows Ana Parejo Vadillo's work in considering Michael Field's verse dramas—of which they published dozens—alongside Michael Field's more canonical lyric work. I appreciate this intervention on many levels, including the elevation by both Richardson and Vadillo of verse drama as a significant, underappreciated literary form in the period, as a majority of Michael Field's published work, and as the heart of Michael Field's own conception of their poetic project. "With their verse dramas, sonnets, and neo-renaissance songs," Richardson writes, "Michael Field is participating in a culture-wide appropriation of old forms for new uses" (17). Richardson situates Michael Field's early, acclaimed tragedy Callirrhoë (1884), the first work they published under what would then become their permanent nom du plume, as their aesthetic manifesto, "one that establishes the themes, forms, concerns, and beliefs that inform the rest of their writing lives together," specifically through the embrace of Dionysian inspiration (60). She further argues that, in composing Callirrhoë as a hybrid of forms—closet drama, verse tragedy, and lyric poems—Michael Field offer "lyric irruptions into the blank verse form" that allow them "to explore subjectivity, divinity, and imagination against a background of...