{"product_id":"stage-fright-martin-puchner-9781421403991","title":"Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama","description":"\u003cp\u003eGrounded equally in discussions of theater history, literary genre, and theory, Martin Puchner's \u003ci\u003eStage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama\u003c\/i\u003e explores the conflict between avant-garde theater and modernism. While the avant-garde celebrated all things theatrical, a dominant strain of modernism tended to define itself against the theater, valuing lyric poetry and the novel instead. Defenders of the theater dismiss modernism's aversion to the stage and its mimicking actors as one more form of the old \"anti-theatrical\" prejudice. But Puchner shows that modernism's ambivalence about the theater was shared even by playwrights and directors and thus was a productive force responsible for some of the greatest achievements in dramatic literature and theater.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA reaction to the aggressive theatricality of Wagner and his followers, the modernist backlash against the theater led to the peculiar genre of the closet drama--a theatrical piece intended to be read rather than staged--whose long-overlooked significance Puchner traces from the theatrical texts of Mallarm? and Stein to the dramatic \"Circe\" chapter of Joyce's \u003ci\u003eUlysses\u003c\/i\u003e. At times, then, the anti-theatrical impulse leads to a withdrawal from the theater. At other times, however, it returns to the stage, when Yeats blends lyric poetry with Japanese N?h dancers, when Brecht controls the stage with novelistic techniques, and when Beckett buries his actors in barrels and behind obsessive stage directions. The modernist theater thus owes much to the closet drama whose literary strategies it blends with a new mise en sc?ne. While offering an alternative history of modernist theater and literature, Puchner also provides a new account of the contradictory forces within modernism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Martin Puchner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1421403994\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781421403991\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Johns Hopkins University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/01\/2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 248\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.90lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.70d","brand":"Martin Puchner","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":45896660123903,"sku":"9781421403991","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_38aa9dfe-342f-4866-b8de-78294a5c670e.jpg?v=1721371992","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/stage-fright-martin-puchner-9781421403991","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}