external_content.epub

Theatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The audience is affected, despite their physical separation from the stage. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world presented to them will never come into direct touch with their real lives. Shakespeare is clearly one o...

Πλήρης περιγραφή

Λεπτομέρειες βιβλιογραφικής εγγραφής
Γλώσσα:English
Έκδοση: Edinburgh University Press 2022
id oapen-20.500.12657-60237
record_format dspace
spelling oapen-20.500.12657-602372024-03-27T14:14:54Z Touching at a Distance Ungelenk, Johannes Literary Criticism European English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism Theatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The audience is affected, despite their physical separation from the stage. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world presented to them will never come into direct touch with their real lives. Shakespeare is clearly one of the master practitioners of theatrical touch. As the study shows, his exceptional dramaturgic talent is intrinsically connected with being one of the great thinkers of touch. His plays fathom the complexity and power of a fascinating notion – touch as a productive proximity that is characterised by unbridgeable distance – which philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-Luc Nancy have written about, centuries later. By playing with touch and its metatheatrical implications, Shakespeare raises questions that make his theatrical art point towards modernity: how are communities to form when traditional institutions begin to crumble? What happens to selfhood when time speeds up, when oneness and timeless truth can no longer serve as reliable foundations? What is the role and the capacity of language in a world that has lost its seemingly unshakeable belief and trust in meaning? How are we to conceive of the unthinkable extremes of human existence – birth and death – when the religious orthodoxy slowly ceases to give satisfactory explanations? Shakespeare’s theatre not only prompts these questions, but provides us with answers. They are all related to touch, and they are all theatrical at their core: they are argued and performed by the striking experience of theatre’s capacities to touch – at a distance. 2022-12-15T05:31:51Z 2022-12-15T05:31:51Z 2023 book 9781474497855 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/60237 eng application/epub+zip Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International external_content.epub Edinburgh University Press Edinburgh University Press 2a191404-86cd-479e-afc8-ff2b8d611a94 b818ba9d-2dd9-4fd7-a364-7f305aef7ee9 9781474497855 Knowledge Unlatched (KU) Edinburgh University Press Knowledge Unlatched open access
institution OAPEN
collection DSpace
language English
description Theatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The audience is affected, despite their physical separation from the stage. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world presented to them will never come into direct touch with their real lives. Shakespeare is clearly one of the master practitioners of theatrical touch. As the study shows, his exceptional dramaturgic talent is intrinsically connected with being one of the great thinkers of touch. His plays fathom the complexity and power of a fascinating notion – touch as a productive proximity that is characterised by unbridgeable distance – which philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-Luc Nancy have written about, centuries later. By playing with touch and its metatheatrical implications, Shakespeare raises questions that make his theatrical art point towards modernity: how are communities to form when traditional institutions begin to crumble? What happens to selfhood when time speeds up, when oneness and timeless truth can no longer serve as reliable foundations? What is the role and the capacity of language in a world that has lost its seemingly unshakeable belief and trust in meaning? How are we to conceive of the unthinkable extremes of human existence – birth and death – when the religious orthodoxy slowly ceases to give satisfactory explanations? Shakespeare’s theatre not only prompts these questions, but provides us with answers. They are all related to touch, and they are all theatrical at their core: they are argued and performed by the striking experience of theatre’s capacities to touch – at a distance.
title external_content.epub
spellingShingle external_content.epub
title_short external_content.epub
title_full external_content.epub
title_fullStr external_content.epub
title_full_unstemmed external_content.epub
title_sort external_content.epub
publisher Edinburgh University Press
publishDate 2022
_version_ 1799945229461094400