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English Language and Literature

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Department of English Publications

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2006

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

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Book Review: Auto/Biography And Identity: Women, Theatre And Performance, Kim Solga Oct 2006

Book Review: Auto/Biography And Identity: Women, Theatre And Performance, Kim Solga

Department of English Publications

Even as interest in feminist theory and criticism in theatre and performance studies continues to wane (or, perhaps, finds itself remapped and redirected), interest in women, autobiography and performance is on the upswing. Auto/biography and Identity enters the field two years after the publication of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson's collection Interfaces: Women, Autobiography, Image, Performance, but, in some contrast to this earlier text and its emphasis on the visual, Auto/biography locates itself specifically at the nexus between women's autobiographical writing and performance. As Gale and Gardner note in their introduction, by exploring theatrical women's writing about themselves alongside …


Tanya Pollard. Drugs And Theater In Early Modern England, Kim Solga Apr 2006

Tanya Pollard. Drugs And Theater In Early Modern England, Kim Solga

Department of English Publications

The no-nonsense title of Tanya Pollard’s Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England led me at first glance to imagine a dry tome cataloguing and exploring the medicine chest of the Renaissance English stage. This book is no such thing: not only is it meticulously researched and a compelling read, but beneath its surface its argument stretches well beyond the limited promise of its title. Pollard delves deep into the period’s antitheatrical debates, making sense of their angst by parsing theater’s more-than-metaphorical link to poisons and narcotics, and the possibility of its affective, transformative power over its audiences.


Rape’S Metatheatrical Return: Rehearsing Sexual Violence Among The Early Moderns, Kim Solga Mar 2006

Rape’S Metatheatrical Return: Rehearsing Sexual Violence Among The Early Moderns, Kim Solga

Department of English Publications

What happens when theatre crosses the line, risks danger in the real? This paper explores the pernicious theatricalization of sexual violence in early modern England, its trouble-making uptake in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and Julie Taymor's contemporary response in her 1999 film version of the play. Along the way the article probes a handful of questions about theatre's social efficacy: what are the consequences of understanding theatre as a potentially malevolent form of public art and expression? How do we account for those moments when theatre poses genuine risk? And, more importantly, how do we build a response to, an ethics …