Pretenders to the Throne:Sovereignty and Modern Drama

Modern drama;sovereignty;sovereignty in literature;sovereign figures in literature;history of drama;Ibsen;Jarry;Ionesco;Pirandello;Beckett;theater;modern theater;Comparative Literature

Jerr, NicoleFried, Michael ;

Johns Hopkins University

关键词: Modern drama;    sovereignty;    sovereignty in literature;    sovereign figures in literature;    history of drama;    Ibsen;    Jarry;    Ionesco;    Pirandello;    Beckett;    theater;    modern theater;    Comparative Literature;   

Others  :  https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/60325/JERR-DISSERTATION-2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: JOHNS HOPKINS DSpace Repository

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation examines an apparent political and aesthetic anomaly that has so far not received scholarly attention: the persistence of sovereigns on the modern stage.Despite the political trend away from monarchical rule, and despite modern theater’s deliberate and celebrated replacement of noble characters by ordinary individuals, kings and queens continue to figure importantly in modern drama. Focusing on sovereign figures in works by influential modernist playwrights as various in their political and artistic commitments as Ibsen, Jarry, Maeterlinck, Yeats, Pirandello, Genet, Beckett and Ionesco, I trace what emerges as a set of concerns about the concept of sovereignty that is both political and aesthetic in nature. First, I consider the shift from literal to metaphorical sovereignty.I examine how Ibsen borrows the vocabulary and concerns of the sovereigns at the center of such early plays as The Pretenders and Emperor and Galilean to establish the dramatic characters and situations of later plays such as The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman.Second, I explore Jarry;;s Ubu roi and Ionesco;;s Macbett, plays I categorize as Modern Macbeths. I argue that both plays offer strong critiques of popular sovereignty, expressing anxieties about ;;the crowd;; and its threat to the individual.Third, in plays I classify as Modern Lears - Pirandello;;s Henry IV, Beckett;;s Endgame, and Ionesco;;s Exit the King - I explore the implications of the ambivalence toward abdication these plays reveal.Throughout my analyses, I argue that modern drama’s interests in sovereignty have to do with modern theater as such and its contentious status as a modern art. This study intervenes in the fields of theater history, modernism, intellectual history, and the intersection of theater and political and aesthetic philosophy more generally in at least three important ways: it provides an alternative account to the standard historical narrative of a modernist theatrical agenda motivated by a renunciation of the past; it reconsiders the efforts of modern dramatists to negotiate the limits of tragedy; and it brings together for the first time analyses of a group of modern plays under the thematic rubric of sovereignty. As the first study linking sovereignty to the modern theater, it expands our scholarly understanding of the long history of the relations between sovereignty and drama dating back to antiquity, and reveals the role of theater in contending with and contributing to the changing definitions of the politico-theological concept of sovereignty.