STRINDBERG BEFORE ANNIHILATION: READING THE CHAMBER PLAYS AS DRAMATIC TEXTS.
Literary scholars are sometimes reprimanded for reading plays as literary texts rather than texts intended for the stage. To avoid a purely textual approach, it is often argued that you should always "visualize" the action as if it took place on the "theater of the mind". In this article, I suggest...
| Publicado en: | Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 48 - 56 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek
2016/2017
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=124345629&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 124345629 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01682148 78HZ jtl: Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek issn: 01682148 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2016/2017 vid: 35 iid: 1 pid: 47712 pub: Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek artinfo: ui: 124345629 ppf: 48 ppct: 8 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 303KB tig: atl: STRINDBERG BEFORE ANNIHILATION: READING THE CHAMBER PLAYS AS DRAMATIC TEXTS. aug: au: van Ooijen, Erik affil: KuFo (The Research Group for Culture Studies), Karlstad University su: Hermeneutics Phenomenological theory (Physics) Semiotics sug: subj: Hermeneutics Phenomenological theory (Physics) Semiotics ab: Literary scholars are sometimes reprimanded for reading plays as literary texts rather than texts intended for the stage. To avoid a purely textual approach, it is often argued that you should always "visualize" the action as if it took place on the "theater of the mind". In this article, I suggest that such a hermeneutics of "mind-staging" is misleading. Referencing theater semiotics and the phenomenological theory of reading of Wolfgang Iser, I argue that such a practice will close the radical openness of the dramatic text, by eliminating its defining indeterminacies. If performance "annihilates" the text by becoming a theatrical event (as suggested by theater semiotics), this will, nevertheless, result in a view of the text as preceding and enduring outside of performance. Thus, the argument from theater semiotics will also come to motivate a purely textual approach to the play as a literary work. The argument is illustrated with examples from the Chamber Plays of August Strindberg. Building on scholars noting his "carelessness" as a playwright, I argue that a reading trying to visualize the action will encounter several hermeneutical pseudo-problems relevant to the producer of the play but irrelevant to the reader. My first example concerns the sequential distribution of the setting in The Pelican: whereas the reader will experience its space as a desolate wasteland (fitting to the theme of the play), the producer, forced to visualize it all at once, will rather experience it as cluttered. My second example concerns the strange dialogue in The Ghost Sonata: whereas the literary reader may settle with an analytic description of its weird poetics, the producer must try to make new meaningful coherency out of this very weirdness. The third example regards an authorial mistake in The Storm, which becomes a puzzle the producer must solve, although it remains unsolvable for the reader. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek is the property of Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek holder: Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek dt: @attributes: year: 2017 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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