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.

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.

This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, "The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, "and "Galileo," Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama. Translated and edited by John Willett, "Brecht on Theater" is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France became famous — notorious even — across Europe for its ambitious attempts to codify and theorise a system of universally valid dramatic 'rules'. So fundamental and formative was this 'classical' conception of drama that it still underpins our modern conception of theatre today. Yet rather than rehearsing familiar arguments about plays, Inventing the Spectator reads early modern France's dramatic theory against the grain, tracing instead the profile and characteristics of the spectator that these arguments imply: the living, breathing individual in whose mind, senses, and experience the theatre comes to life. In so doing, Joseph Harris raises numerous questions — of imagination and illusion, reason and emotion, vision and aurality, to name but a few — that strike at the very heart of human psychology, cognition, and experience. Bridging the gap between literary and theatre studies, history of psychology, and intellectual history, Inventing the Spectator thus reconstructs the theatre spectator's experience as it was understood and theorised within French dramatic theory between the Renaissance and the Revolution. It explores early modern spectatorship through three main themes (illusion and the senses; pleasure and narrative; interest and identification) and five key dramatic theoreticians (d'Aubignac, Corneille, Dubos, Rousseau, and Diderot). As it demonstrates, the period's dramatic rules are at heart rules of psychology, cognition, and affect that emerged out of a complex dialogue with human subjectivity in all its richness.

Arguing that Brecht’s aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht’s aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams. Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose vital importance for the present is located in decentred theories of subjectivity. Brecht and Critical Theory maps the many ways in which Brechtian thinking pervades critical thought today, informing the critical tools and stances that make up the contemporary study of aesthetics.

In Dionysus on the Other Shore, Letizia Fusini re-examines Gao Xingjian’s post-1987 theatre as a form of tragedy.