Science on Stage is the first full-length study of the phenomenon of "science plays"--theatrical events that weave scientific content into the plot lines of the drama. The book investigates the tradition of science on the stage from the Renaissance to the present, focusing in particular on the current wave of science playwriting. Drawing on extensive interviews with playwrights and directors, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr discusses such works as Michael Frayn's Copenhagen and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. She asks questions such as, What accounts for the surge of interest in putting science on the stage? What areas of science seem most popular with playwrights, and why? How has the tradition evolved throughout the centuries? What currents are defining it now? And what are some of the debates and controversies surrounding the use of science on stage? Organized by scientific themes, the book examines selected contemporary plays that represent a merging of theatrical form and scientific content--plays in which the science is literally enacted through the structure and performance of the play. Beginning with a discussion of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the book traces the history of how scientific ideas (quantum mechanics and fractals, for example) are dealt with in theatrical presentations. It discusses the relationship of science to society, the role of science in our lives, the complicated ethical considerations of science, and the accuracy of the portrayal of science in the dramatic context. The final chapter looks at some of the most recent and exciting developments in science playwriting that are taking the genre in innovative directions and challenging the audience's expectations of a science play. The book includes a comprehensive annotated list of four centuries of science plays, which will be useful for teachers, students, and general readers alike.

This index is a veritable who's who of the greats of Western literature. . . . The Board recommends it for every collection whose users conduct analytical studies of literature. Reference Books Bulletin The powerful hold that literature exercises is based primarily on recognition--the reader's ability to identify with others through shared human concerns that transcend ttace, time, and cultural boundaries. These universal themes, and how they have been treated in literature from the classical period to the present, are the subject of the critical essays comprising this volume. A fascinating resource for students and general readers and an essential research tool for scholars in literature, it is the first thematic reference on this scale to be published in English. The dictionary consists of 143 essays contributed by 98 specialists in world literature. Topics covered include themes relating to adventure, family life, the supernatural, eroticism, status, humor, idealism, terror, and many other categories of human experience. Each entry begins with a defintion and a sketch on the origin and historical background of the literary theme. The topical essay discusses the significance and occurrence of the theme in world literature and supplies information on geographical area, genre, style, and chronology. Entries conclude with a selected bibliography of scholarship in the area. A cross-index to themes and motifs will enable the reader to find information on secondary or related topics. Convenient to use and presented in a standardized format, this major new reference will be an important acquisition for libraries with collections in English, American, and world literature.

A comprehensive three-volume reference work offers six hundred entries, with the first two volumes covering themes and the third volume exploring two hundred classic works in literature, television, and film.

They were mad, of course. Or evil. Or godless, amoral, arrogant, impersonal, and inhuman. At best, they were well-intentioned but blind to the dangers of forces they barely controlled. They were Faust and Frankenstein, Jekyll and Moreau, Caligari and Strangelove--the scientists of film and fiction, cultural archetypes that reflected ancient fears of tampering with the unknown or unleashing the little-understood powers of nature. In From Faust to Strangelove Roslyn Haynes offers the first detailed and comprehensive study of the image of the scientist in Western literature and film--from medieval images of alchemists to present-day depictions of cyberpunks and genetic engineers.

H. G. Wells—the inventor of the concept of the time machine and the phrase "the Shape of Things to Come"—described his life's work as one of "critical anticipation." Shadows of the Future identifies the attempt to imagine possible futures as the unifying principle behind Wells's diverse and sometimes wayward literary career. The book unravels the complex layers of meaning in The Time Machine, and shows how throughout his life he sought to exploit the potential of literary and cultural prophecy in new ways. Described by John Middleton Murry as "the last prophet of bourgeois Europe," he was also its first futurologist. In Shadows of the Future Wells's assumption of the prophet's role is related to his championship of the modern scientific outlook, and to the theory and practice of science fiction and utopian literature. Parrinder explores the connections between novelty and repetition, between imagining the future and imagining the past, and between prophecy and parody as literary modes. Wells's science fiction is reexamined both as a projection of the cosmology implicit in the writings of Darwin and Huxley, and as a new variation on the Romantic and Enlightenment themes of such earlier authors as Blake, Gibbon, and Mary Shelley. Later chapters relate Wells's fiction to his nonfiction and look at the uneasy relationship of his utopianism to literary prophecy, and at the paradoxes inherent in the militant internationalism of the " prophet at large." Finally, Wells's influence is traced in a study of the antiutopian fictions of Zamyatin and Orwell, and in a broad account of the connections between science fiction and the scientific outlook down to our own time.