DOCSLIB.ORG

Contemporary Antigones, Medeas and Trojan Women

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository CONTEMPORARY ANTIGONES, MEDEAS AND TROJAN WOMEN PERFORM ON STAGES AROUND THE WORLD by OLGA KEKIS A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Drama and Theatre Arts School of English, Drama, and American and Canadian Studies College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham February 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis examines postmodern theatrical adaptations of Antigone, Medea and The Trojan Women to show how they re-define the central female figures of the source texts by creating a new work, or ‘hyperplay’, that gives the silenced and often silent female figures a voice, and assigns them a political presence in their own right. Using a collection of diverse plays and their performances which occurred in a variety of geographical locations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this thesis analyzes adaptive, ‘hypertheatrical’, strategies employed by the theatre, through which play texts from the past are ‘re-made’ in the here and now of theatrical performances. A close analysis of these performances demonstrates how the historical and cultural identity of contemporary audiences informs the process of re- interpretation of familiar material within new contexts. They evidence how these re-makings reflect the culture, the political moment or the socio-historical coincidence in which they are conceived and performed. Most importantly this thesis shows that without exception these appropriations become entirely new Antigones, Medeas and Trojan Women; they invoke re- configurations or re-inventions of femininity which detect and emphasise individual women’s strengths and female solidarity, thus placing the plays firmly within a contemporary feminist discourse. DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my husband Chris and to our three daughters Stella, Danae and Sofia. Without their constant encouragement, support, understanding, and unconditional love this project would never have been completed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to many people who helped me in numerous ways to complete my thesis. First and foremost I owe thanks to my supervisors Kara Reilly and Liz Tomlin for their invaluable guidance, their unending support, their continued encouragement and their insightful comments throughout my research and the writing of my thesis. I need to thank Kara especially, for believing in me even when there wasn’t much to believe in – without her confidence in my abilities I would not have dared embark on this project. I would like to thank Liz in particular for tirelessly insisting that I never do anything less than perfect – she has provided me with a model of academic excellence in procedure and enquiry. I am grateful to all the academic staff in the Drama Department at the University of Birmingham who were always supportive and helpful and all the staff at the OLRC library for their helpfulness and cheerfulness. A special thank you to John Warrick for giving me early on the practical experience which I so lacked in theatre, to Kate Newey for showing me how to work with impossible deadlines and for challenging me to do more than I thought I ever could do, to Russell Jackson for giving me the opportunity to teach in the department and gain invaluable experience, and to Brian Crow for first pointing me in the direction of Brecht and his relationship to adaptation, for his insightful and constructive comments on early drafts of my thesis, and for our many, long, conversations where he always encouraged me and supported my efforts. Many grateful thanks go to Caroline Radcliffe for her insightful comments and helpful suggestions for improving my thesis, as well as for her encouraging support. I would also like to thank Olga Taxidou for generously providing me with the text for her adaptation Medea: A World Apart, as well as with a DVD recording of the premiere of the play, and Sarah Bryan-Bertail for making so much effort to find and then send me her video recording of the performance of Charles Mee’s Trojan Women: A Love Story. To Joanne Tompkins, in particular, I owe a considerable debt. In practical terms I am thankful because she is the one who first pointed out Griselda Gambaro’s Antígona to me and also told me about Christine Evans’ Trojan Barbie. But more importantly I am indebted because she supported and encouraged me from the very start of my project with genuine generosity which will always remain an inspiration to me. I wish to thank all my friends who put up with me over the years that it took to complete my research and to apologise for the many times I did not answer their phone calls, and refused their invitations for coffee, evenings out and shopping expeditions. But mostly I need to thank them for their emotional support and for the endless times they looked after my children so that I could go to a performance, attend a conference or finish a chapter. Their friendship has meant everything, and made everything possible. Finally, the greatest debt of all, as ever, is to my family: to my husband Chris Paliobeis for standing by me all through this project, for listening to me for hours as my ideas formulated, and for sharing my enthusiasm for the theatre and for postmodern adaptations of ancient Greek drama; to my three lovely daughters Stella, Danae and Sofia for their unending patience, their big, encouraging hugs, their lovely, loving smiles, and for never once complaining about the hours and days that this thesis took their mum away from them; finally to my parents Mena and Basil Kekis for their selfless love and unending support. Without their help this thesis would simply not have been possible. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Feminist and Counter Canonical Discourse 4 Cultural Materialism, Postmodernism and History 7 Postmodern Brechtian Performance Theory 11 The Chapters 12 Chapter One The Ancient Play Texts: Radical in the Original 16 Setting the scene / Historical Background 16 Fifth century Athens: Radical state supported theatre 23 Chapter Two Radical Postmodern Theatrical Adaptation 29 1948, Brecht adapts Antigone – a landmark production 29 Theatrical adaptation as a radical postmodern process – The beginnings 40 Towards a definition: Translation, Transposition, Adaptation 44 Re-making: The Work of Charles L. Mee 47 Theatrical adaptation: a process and a definition 50 Hypertheatre – Hypertheatricality 53 New Antigones, Medeas, Trojan Women: radical hypertheatrical engagement 60 Chapter Three Medea Adapted: The Subaltern Barbarian Speaks 64 431BCE Medea: a barbarian woman defies the powers of a patriarchal and culturally chauvinistic establishment 64 Medea adapted: performing fragmentation to give Medea a voice 71 Medea: A World Apart; Medea and the Women of Troy become refugees in the twentieth century 78 A potentially postdramatic text in a Brechtian performance 91 Medea, contemporary material in East Berlin suburbia 99 Hotel Medea: Medea and the audience defy the night 118 Chapter Four The Women of Troy Adapted: Victims of Wars Reclaim Their Broken Bodies 141 415 BCE Women of Troy: royalty and commoners interrogate Athenian imperialist ventures 141 The Trojan Women In Performance On The Modern Stage: A Cry Against All Wars 152 Radical adaptations of The Trojan Women: a female “writ of habeas corpus” 155 Trojan Women: A Love Story; A gender battle in a world of wreckage 159 Peeling:A painful striptease of clothes and souls peels off layers of misconception 172 Trojan Barbie: “A dream with a hard core of truth inside.” 185 Chapter Five Who Does Antigone Belong To? Who Does Antigone Speak To? 202 442 BCE Antigone: A female citizen breaks the protocol of silence and invisibility 202 Antigone Now: Why Antigone and Whose Antigone? 214 Creon’s Antigone: Metatheatre as a political act 221 Antigone, Antígona and Argentina: An ongoing political relationship 228 A Welcome to Thebes by Eurydice, its democratically elected leader 238 Afterword 256 List of Productions 262 Bibliography 257 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fig. 2.1 (p.32) Picture of the two sisters in the prologue from 1948 edition of Antigonemodell Fig. 2.2 (p.33) Photograph from Antigonemodell 1948. The totems are visible on the left. The horse skulls outline the acting space. The performers who are not acting are sitting on the benches in full view of the audience. Fig. 2.3 (p.35) Helene Weigel as Antigone, with the door attached to her back; Hans Gaugler as Creon; from the performance in Chur, Switzerland, 1948 Fig. 2.4 (p.35) Antigone on the left; Creon and the elders on the right. Fig. 3.1 (p.92) The refugees caught in the storm Fig. 3.2 (p.93) The broken Caryatids Fig. 3.3 (p.94) Drinking from the fountain Fig. 3.4 (p.95) A dungeon-like transit camp Fig. 3.5 (p.96) The while scarf Fig. 3.6 (p.97) The hour-glass Fig. 3.7 (p.114) Medeaplay: Medea rises from the bed on which she was tied Fig. 3.8 (p.115) Multiple characters, multiple identities Fig. 3.9 (p.117) Medeamaterial: three Medeas, one Jason Fig.
Recommended publications
  • Breathtaking Tragedy at Noche Flamenca by Kalila Kingsford Smith

    Breathtaking Tragedy at Noche Flamenca by Kalila Kingsford Smith

    Photo: Chris Bennion Breathtaking Tragedy at Noche Flamenca by Kalila Kingsford Smith Antigona is full of breathtaking, powerful moments. A collaboration between Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca and theater director Lee Breuer, the production is based on Sophocles’ heroine Antigone, who is sentenced to be buried alive in a cave after fulfilling the sacred duty of burying her brother, who died a rebel. The story is told equally through the music, the song, and the dance, as is traditional in the flamenco form. In this interpretation of the Greek tragedy, the chorus wears masks, obscuring the performers’ identities and yet intensifying the expression of each emotion. As in an opera, translations are projected onto a scrim upstage to help convey the narrative to those who don’t understand Spanish. However, I hardly glance at them; my eyes never stray from the dancers, and I understand without reading the text the raw emotion within la canción. Our first vision of this Spanish/Greek universe is black silk pouring down towards the stage, silk held in place by a man standing on a tall platform obscured by the darkness. He ripples the fabric in time with the strumming of the guitar, catching the light like glimmers on a river. Slowly we see shapes pressing into the silk, the crouched bodies of the chorus emerging from the darkness one arm at a time. Then we see the masks—blindingly white against the black river—demons that crawl, reach, and writhe in a clump of faces. Typically, one wouldn’t see movement so close to the ground in a flamenco production, but I am enthralled by the eeriness of this image.
  • UWL LCM Welcome to Thebes Programme 2021

    UWL LCM Welcome to Thebes Programme 2021

    BA (Hons) Acting and BA (Hons) Actor Musicianship present WELCOME TO THEBES A play by Moira Buffini London College of Music @LCMLive Streaming Online LCMLive 17 – 20 June 2021 London College of Music Director’s Note Cast and Characters After ten years of brutal civil war, When Sophocles was writing in Athens Cast Character Eurydice and her government are in the fifth century BCE, Thebes was an preparing to lead Thebes into its enemy territory. Although almost on its Lorraine Adeyefa Eurydice (Cast 1) / Helia (Cast 2) new life as a democracy. Holding the doorstep – just one day’s trek across a Christian Bludell Xenophanes (Cast 1) / Prince Tydeus (Cast 2) new-found peace by their fingertips, mountain – it was mythic and distant. A Theodoros Charalambous Tiresias they face danger on all sides. At home, point of departure in our process was to war lords seeking to profit from chaos consider the people stranded in refugee Rose De Vera Pargeia stir up rebellion, while outside their camps in Greece today: to ask who Jenna Dyckhoff Megaera / Eunomia gates, neighbouring Sparta is looking they are, where they have come from to extend its empire. Their only hope and what is our responsibility to them. Molly Evans Antigone is to secure the help of democratic Forced out, homes destroyed, they have Sophia Ford Aglaea superpower Athens. risked their lives to flee circumstances we can barely imagine, in order simply Tiana Mai Jackson Euphrosyne and Harmonia Moira Buffini relocates Oedpius’ cursed to live. During the pandemic, the Kofi Jordan Prince Tydeus (Cast 1) / Xenophanes (Cast 2) family to the twenty-first century in situation of these already vulnerable a radical reimagining of Sophocles’ people continues to worsen.
  • Brecht's Antigone in Performance

    Brecht's Antigone in Performance

    PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY RHYTHM AND STRUCTURE: BRECHT’S ANTIGONE IN PERFORMANCE BRUNO C. DUARTE FCSH UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA Brecht’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone in 1948 was openly a political gesture that aspired to the complete rationalization of Greek Tragedy. From the beginning, Brecht made it his task to wrench ancient tragic poetry out of its ‘ideological haze’, and proceeded to dismantle and eliminate what he named the ‘element of fate’, the crucial substance of tragic myth itself. However, his encounter with Hölderlin's unorthodox translation of Antigone, the main source for his appropriation and rewriting of the play, led him to engage in a radical experiment in theatrical practice. From the isolated first performance of Antigone, a model was created—the Antigonemodell —that demanded a direct confrontation with the many obstacles brought about by the foreign structure of Greek tragedy as a whole. In turn, such difficulties brought to light the problem of rhythm in its relation to Brecht’s own ideas of how to perform ancient poetry in a modern setting, as exemplified by the originally alienating figure of the tragic chorus. More importantly, such obstacles put into question his ideas of performance in general, as well as the way they can still resonate in our own understanding of what performance is or might be in a broader sense. 1947–1948: Swabian inflections It is known that upon returning from his American exile, at the end of 1947, Bertolt Brecht began to work on Antigone, the tragic poem by Sophocles. Brecht’s own Antigone premiered in the Swiss city of Chur on February 1948.
  • In the Realm of Politics, Nonsense, and the Absurd: the Myth of Antigone in West and South Slavic Drama in the Mid-Twentieth Century

    In the Realm of Politics, Nonsense, and the Absurd: the Myth of Antigone in West and South Slavic Drama in the Mid-Twentieth Century

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.4312/keria.20.3.95-108 Alenka Jensterle-Doležal In the Realm of Politics, Nonsense, and the Absurd: The Myth of Antigone in West and South Slavic Drama in the Mid-Twentieth Century Throughout history humans have always felt the need to create myths and legends to explain and interpret human existence. One of the classical mythi- cal figures is ancient Antigone in her torment over whether to obey human or divine law. This myth is one of the most influential myths in European literary history. In the creation of literature based on this myth there have always been different methods and styles of interpretation. Literary scholars always emphasised its philosophical and anthropological dimensions.1 The first variants of the myth of Antigone are of ancient origin: the playAntigone by Sophocles (written around 441 BC) was a model for others throughout cultural and literary history.2 There are various approaches to the play, but the well-established central theme deals with one question: the heroine Antigone is deeply convinced that she has the right to reject society’s infringement on her freedom and to act, to recognise her familial duty, and not to leave her brother’s body unburied on the battlefield. She has a personal obligation: she must bury her brother Polyneikes against the law of Creon, who represents the state. In Sophocles’ play it is Antigone’s stubbornness transmitted into action 1 Cf. also: Simone Fraisse, Le mythe d’Antigone (Paris: A. Colin, 1974); Cesare Molinari, Storia di Antigone da Sofocle al Living theatre: un mito nel teatro occidentale (Bari: De Donato, 1977); George Steiner, Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Elisabeth Frenzel, Stoffe der Weltlitera- tur: Ein Lexikon Dichtungsgeschichtlicher Längsschnitte, 5.
  • What to Do with Gestus Today Version II

    What to Do with Gestus Today Version II

    Abstract This thesis explores the common and dialectical features of pedagogy, Bertolt Brecht’s Gestus, and identity construction. It speaks from the perspectives of pedagogue, actor and subject. It argues that in each of these modes the subject is necessarily engaged in both an ontological dilemma and opportunity, which is performative. It exposes embodiment as an oscillatory process of absence and presence. This is predicated on the impossibility of arriving at a fixed notion of being in the world. The thesis is set within an autobiographical frame. First because each mode marks an encounter in the life of Rob Vesty, and second because the practice-based-research uses autobiographical performance. It advances by constructing a piece of performative writing, an autobiographical timeline, to affect an experience of the practice, which informs this thesis. This piece introduces a montage of three juxtaposing studies. The first draws on Rob Vesty’s work in TIE with Splendid Productions and uses the company’s 2007/2008 performance and workshop tour of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechuan. It argues that a dialectic, rather than didactic, process must occur in the pedagogic setting and that this is dependent on the presence of a creative gap produced by a strong aesthetic. The second study then argues that the Gestic actor embodies and ‘writes’ this creative gap in a parodic way and that a virtue is made of showing its construction. The final study turns to Rob Vesty’s (2008) solo theatre show – One Man Good Woman – to chart the way identity impacts upon autobiography. It argues that the ‘written’ nature of autobiography and identity renders the subject both absent and present and retains dialectical features in its construction.
  • Antigona Van Tommaso Traetta Wo 2, Do 3 April 2003 Om Dramaturgische Redenen Zijn in De Partituur Enige Coupures Aangebracht

    Antigona Van Tommaso Traetta Wo 2, Do 3 April 2003 Om Dramaturgische Redenen Zijn in De Partituur Enige Coupures Aangebracht

    Muziektheater Transparant Antigona van Tommaso Traetta wo 2, do 3 april 2003 Om dramaturgische redenen zijn in de partituur enige coupures aangebracht. redactie programmaboekje deSingel en Janine Brogt druk Tegendruk duur van de voorstelling: deel 1 1 uur pauze 25 minuten deel 2 1 uur spreektaal Italiaans . boventiteling Nederlands bediening boventiteling Bart Boone gelieve uw GSM uit te schakelen! Muziektheater Transparant Antigona van Tommaso Traetta dirigent Paul Dombrecht assistent-dirigent Ewald Demeyere regie Gerardjan Rijnders regieassistent en voorstellingsleider Remi Beelprez muzikale uitvoering orkest Il Fondamento repetente Noémi Biro koor La Sfera del Canto verantwoordelijke dramaturgie Janine Brogt licht- en standenplan Tom Verheijen decor Paul Gallis verantwoordelijke belichting Luc De Vreese kostuums Rien Bekkers productieleiding Veerle Francke licht Reinier Tweebeeke technische leiding Roel Ghesquière beweging Bambi Uden lichttechnici Koen Ghesquière, Dag Jennes podiumtechnici Anton Devilder, Koen Ghesquière, rolverdeling Maarten Streefland Antigona, prinses van Thebe Raffaella Milanesi rigging Jan Hooyberghs Ismene, haar zuster Giorgia Milanesi coördinatie orkest en koor Philippe Severyns Creonte, haar oom Markus Brutscher vertaling libretto Janine Brogt Emone, Creonte’s zoon Maartje de Lint assistentie dramaturgie Bart Boone Adrasto, een Thebaans edelman David-Erich Fankhauser kleedsters Viviane Coubergs, Reintje Daens orkest kap en grime Sylvia Hiel, Leen Samyn viool Dirk Van Daele, Marianne Herssens, Maia Silberstein,
  • An Analysis of Personal Transformation and Musical Adaptation in Vocal Compositions of Kurt Weill

    An Analysis of Personal Transformation and Musical Adaptation in Vocal Compositions of Kurt Weill

    University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) 2011 An Analysis of Personal Transformation and Musical Adaptation in Vocal Compositions of Kurt Weill Elizabeth Rose Williamson Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Recommended Citation Williamson, Elizabeth Rose, "An Analysis of Personal Transformation and Musical Adaptation in Vocal Compositions of Kurt Weill" (2011). Honors Theses. 2157. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2157 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AN ANALYSIS OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION AND MUSICAL ADAPTATION IN VOCAL COMPOSITIONS OF KURT WEILL by Elizabeth Rose Williamson A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Mississippi in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. Oxford May 2011 Approved by Reader: Professor Corina Petrescu Reader: Professor Charles Gates I T46S 2^1 © 2007 Elizabeth Rose Williamson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the people of the Kurt Weill Zentrum in Dessau Gennany who graciously worked with me despite the reconstruction in the facility. They opened their resources to me and were willing to answer any and all questions. Thanks to Clay Terry, I was able to have an uproariously hilarious ending number to my recital with “Song of the Rhineland.” I thank Dr. Charles Gates for his attention and interest in my work.
  • Bertolt Brecht B

    Bertolt Brecht B

    Bertolt Brecht b. Feb. 10, 1898, Augsburg d. Aug. 14, 1956, East Berlin EUGEN BERTHOLD FRIEDRICH BRECHT, German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer whose epic theatre departed from the conventions of theatrical illusion and developed the drama as a social and ideological forum for leftist causes. Brecht was, first, a superior poet, with a command of many styles and moods. As a playwright he was an intensive worker, a restless piecer-together of ideas not always his own (The Threepenny Opera is based on John Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Edward II on Marlowe), a sardonic humorist, and a man of rare musical and visual awareness; but he was often bad at creating living characters or at giving his plays tension and shape. As a producer he liked lightness, clarity, and firmly knotted narrative sequence; a perfectionist, he forced the German theatre, against its nature, to underplay. As a theoretician he made principles out of his preferences--and even out of his faults. Until 1924 Brecht lived in Bavaria, where he was born, studied medicine (Munich, 1917-21), and served in an army hospital (1918). From this period date his first play, Baal (produced 1923); his first success, Trommeln in der Nacht (Kleist Preis, 1922; Drums in the Night); the poems and songs collected as Die Hauspostille (1927; A Manual of Piety, 1966), his first professional production (Edward II, 1924); and his admiration for Wedekind, Rimbaud, Villon, and Kipling. During this period he also developed a violently antibourgeois attitude that reflected his generation's deep disappointment in the civilization that had come crashing down at the end of World War I.
  • ATINER's Conference Paper Series MDT2016-1961

    ATINER's Conference Paper Series MDT2016-1961

    ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: LNG2014-1176 Athens Institute for Education and Research ATINER ATINER's Conference Paper Series MDT2016-1961 Examples of Greek Mythology and History in Croatian Drama of the Second Half of the 20th Century: T. S. Marović and M. Gavran Helena Peričić Professor University of Zadar Croatia 1 ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: MDT2016-1961 An Introduction to ATINER's Conference Paper Series ATINER started to publish this conference papers series in 2012. It includes only the papers submitted for publication after they were presented at one of the conferences organized by our Institute every year. This paper has been peer reviewed by at least two academic members of ATINER. Dr. Gregory T. Papanikos President Athens Institute for Education and Research This paper should be cited as follows: Peričić, H. (2016). "Examples of Greek Mythology and History in Croatian Drama of the Second Half of the 20th Century: T. S. Marović and M. Gavran", Athens: ATINER'S Conference Paper Series, No: MDT2016-1961. Athens Institute for Education and Research 8 Valaoritou Street, Kolonaki, 10671 Athens, Greece Tel: + 30 210 3634210 Fax: + 30 210 3634209 Email: [email protected] URL: www.atiner.gr URL Conference Papers Series: www.atiner.gr/papers.htm Printed in Athens, Greece by the Athens Institute for Education and Research. All rights reserved. Reproduction is allowed for non-commercial purposes if the source is fully acknowledged. ISSN: 2241-2891 06/09/2016 2 ATINER CONFERENCE PAPER SERIES No: MDT2016-1961 Examples of Greek Mythology and History in Croatian Drama of the Second Half of the 20th Century: T.
  • Haitian Creole – English Dictionary

    Haitian Creole – English Dictionary

    + + Haitian Creole – English Dictionary with Basic English – Haitian Creole Appendix Jean Targète and Raphael G. Urciolo + + + + Haitian Creole – English Dictionary with Basic English – Haitian Creole Appendix Jean Targète and Raphael G. Urciolo dp Dunwoody Press Kensington, Maryland, U.S.A. + + + + Haitian Creole – English Dictionary Copyright ©1993 by Jean Targète and Raphael G. Urciolo All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Authors. All inquiries should be directed to: Dunwoody Press, P.O. Box 400, Kensington, MD, 20895 U.S.A. ISBN: 0-931745-75-6 Library of Congress Catalog Number: 93-71725 Compiled, edited, printed and bound in the United States of America Second Printing + + Introduction A variety of glossaries of Haitian Creole have been published either as appendices to descriptions of Haitian Creole or as booklets. As far as full- fledged Haitian Creole-English dictionaries are concerned, only one has been published and it is now more than ten years old. It is the compilers’ hope that this new dictionary will go a long way toward filling the vacuum existing in modern Creole lexicography. Innovations The following new features have been incorporated in this Haitian Creole- English dictionary. 1. The definite article that usually accompanies a noun is indicated. We urge the user to take note of the definite article singular ( a, la, an or lan ) which is shown for each noun. Lan has one variant: nan.
  • FALL 1975 19 Marechafs Antígona: More Greek Than French

    FALL 1975 19 Marechafs Antígona: More Greek Than French

    FALL 1975 19 MarechaFs Antígona: More Greek than French ALYCE DE KUEHNE The influence of classical Greek tragedy has been incalculable on universal literature. French dramatists have been especially receptive to the ancient tragedians and some writers, such as Gide, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Sartre and Anouilh, have in turn been a source of classical inspiration to dramatists of other nations. A comparative analysis of the Antigone theme in two contemporary versions—the well known play of Anouilh and the lesser known tragedy of the Argentine Leopoldo Marechal—will suffice to show why the Sophoclean myth has survived, and how it has been brought up to date in order to confront the perennial controversy over politics, religion and the dictates of man's conscience. Ravaged by two World Wars, the twentieth century has thus far offered a propitious medium for tragedy, similar to fifth century Periclean Athens, like­ wise plagued by warfare and injustice. The disorientation caused by accelerated social change with its new set of values, as well as anguish in the face of possible nuclear destruction, engender tragedy, the dramatic vehicle which in true Greek tradition performs a social and moral function. This ethical purpose is what distinguishes the present-day approach to tragedy from the attitude of the nineteenth century, for example, when despair of the present and future pro­ duced hundreds of French tragedies, designed merely to entertain the spirit with classical reminiscences of antiquity.1 Sophocles' Antigone treats a problem of universal magnitude: divine law vs. human law.2 Anouilh, in his pessimistic political satire, emphasizes fatalism by deliberately retelling the archetypal myth with its action already predetermined.
  • Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

    Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

    Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Biography Bertolt Brecht was born in Augsburg. His father, a Catholic, was the director of a paper company and his mother, a Protestant, was the daughter of a civil servant. Brecht began to write poetry as a boy, and had his first poems published in 1914. After finishing elementary school, he was sent to the Königliches Realgymnasium, where he gained fame as an enfant terrible. In 1917 Brecht enrolled as a medical student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he sometimes attended also the theatre seminar conducted by Professor Artur Kutscher. Between 1919 and 1921, he wrote theatre criticisms for the left-wing Socialist paper Die Augsburger. After military service as a medical orderly, he returned to his studies, but abandoned them in 1921. During the Bavarian revolutionary turmoil of 1918, Brech wrote his first play, Baal, which was produced in 1923. The play celebrated life and sexuality and was huge success. Brecht's association with Communism began in 1919, when he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party. Friendship with the writer Lion Feuchtwanger was an important literary contact for the young writer. Feuchtwanger advised him on the discipline of playwriting. In 1920, Brecht was named chief adviser on play selection at the Munich Kammerspiele. As a result of a brief affair with Fräulein Bie Banholzer, Brecht's son Frank was born. In 1922, he married the opera singer Marianne Zoff; they divorced in 1927. In the 1930s, Brecht´s books and plays were banned in Germany, and theatrical performances were interrupted by the police or summarily forbidden.