Artaud and his doubles
By: Kimberly Jannarone
Series: Theater: theory/text/performance
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9780472117369
Subjects: Performing arts; Knowledge; Cruelty in literature; History and criticism; Criticism and interpretation; Drama; History; Experimental theater; Theory
Description: Artaud and His Doubles is a radical re-thinking of one of the most well-known and influential theater artists and theorists of the twentieth century. Placing Artaud's works and rhetoric within the specific context of European political, theatrical, and intellectual history of the early twentieth century, the book reveals Artaud's affinities with a disturbing array of anti-intellectual and reactionary writers and artists whose ranks swelled catastrophically between the wars in Western Europe. Kimberly Jannarone shows that Artaud's work (particularly his famous 1938 manifesto, The Theater and Its Double) itself reveals two sets of doubles: one, a body of peculiarly persistent received interpretations from the American experimental theater and French post-structuralist readings of the 1960s; and, two, a darker set of doubles brought to light through close historical examination{u2014}those of Artaud's contemporaries who, in the tumultuous, alienated, and pessimistic atmosphere enveloping much of Europe after World War I, denounced the degradation of civilization, yearned for cosmic purification, and called for an ecstatic loss of the self.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-241) and index.
Table of contents: title: The fight against civilization; or, the rebirth of tragedy. Invocation of the plague :  nouveau mal du siècle the residues of war "The future of the world"; title: Reactionary modern :  the controversions of the counter-enlightenment anywhere out of this world irrational affinitie; title: Audience, mass, crowd. The avant-garde and the audience : the crisis of bourgeois theater the avant-garde and the  audience immersion agitation; title: The theater of cruelty and conceptions of the  audience; title: Theaters for the masses : working on the masses mythical, total, real; title: Crowds and cruelty : crowd feeling in the theater of cruelty the nerve meter; title: Visions of power. The artist of the theater :  the rise of the director artistic power in the Jarry Theater the direction of menace; title: Controlling forces : directing The Cenci concentrating control power by charisma; title: Conclusion : longing for nothingness.