The Early Modern Theatre of Cruelty and its Doubles Artaud and Influence [Hardcover]

This book examines the influence of the early modern period on Antonin Artauds seminal work The Theatre and Its Double, arguing that Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and their early modern context are an integral part of the Theatre of Cruelty and essential to its very understanding. The chapters draw links between the early modern theatrical obsession with plague and regeneration, and how it is mirrored in Artauds concept of cruelty in the theatre. As a discussion of the influence of Shakespeare and his contemporaries on Artaud, and the reciprocal influence of Artaud on contemporary interpretations of early modern drama, this book is an original addition to both the fields of early modern theatre studies and modern drama.

2. Interpreting Antonin Artauds Theatre of Cruelty Foundations: Th??tre Alfred Jarry  Three Influential Events  Elizabethan Dramatic Conventions  Cruelty in the Theatre.

3. Theatre and Plague: The Doubly Potent Spectacles of Early Modern Culture The Marseilles Plague  Physiological and Psychological Symptoms of Plague  Plague in Early Modern England  The Plague-Theatre  Filth and Infection  Theatre, Contagion, and Ritual.

4. Bear-baiting and the Theatre of Cruelty The Pit and The Theatre  Elizabethan Receptivity  Jacobean Popularity  The Arena of Ambiguity  From Barbarity to Civility.

5. Thyestean Savagery: Seneca, the Renaissance, and the Theatre of Cruelty Beyond Recitatio  The Sacrificial Crisis  Contagious Furor and Insatiability  Ritual and Bacchic Theatre  William Shakespeares Titus Andronicus directed by Yukio Ninagawa.

6. Artaud and the Elizabethans: Revenge Tragedy as InspiralƒÔ