Author : Phoebevon Held
Release : 2017-07-05
Genre : Foreign Language Study
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 026/5 ( reviews)
Book Synopsis Alienation and Theatricality by : Phoebevon Held
Download or read book Alienation and Theatricality written by Phoebevon Held. This book was released on 2017-07-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alienation (Vefremdung) is a concept inextricably linked with the name of twentieth-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht - with modernism, the avant-garde and Marxist theory. However, as Phoebe von Held argues in this book, 'alienation' as a sociological and aesthetic notionavant la lettre had already surfaced in the thought of eighteenth-century French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot. This original study destabilizes the conventional understanding of alienation through a reading ofLe Paradoxe sur le comedien, Le Neveu de Rameau and other works by Diderot, opening up new ways of interpretation and aesthetic practices. If alienation constitutes a historical development for the Marxist Brecht, for Diderot it defines an existential condition. Brecht uses the alienation-effect to undermine a form of naturalism based on subjectivity, identification and illusion; Diderot, by contrast, plunges the spectator into identification and illusion, to produce an aesthetic of theatricality that is profoundly alienating and yet remains anchored in subjectivity.
