[PDF] Rewriting The Nation eBook

Author : Aleks Sierz
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 50,57 MB
Release : 2011-01-16
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1408112396

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In recent years British theatre has seen a renaissance in playwriting that has been accompanied by a proliferation of writing awards, new writing groups and a ceaseless quest for fresh, authentic voices that will ensure the vitality and relevance of theatre in the twenty-first century. Rewriting the Nation is a perfect companion to Britain's burgeoning theatre writing scene that will prove invaluable to anyone wanting a better appreciation of why British theatre - at its best - remains one of the most celebrated and vigorous throughout the world. The books opens by defining what is meant by 'new writing' and providing a study of the system in which it is produced. It considers the work of the leading 'new writing' theatres, such as the Royal Court, the Traverse, the Bush, the Hampstead and the National theatres, together with the London fringe and the work of touring companies. In the second part, Sierz provides a fascinating survey of the main preoccupations and issues that have characterised new plays in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that while under New Labour economic, political and social change continued apace, generating anxiety and uncertainty in the population, theatre has been able to articulate not only those anxieties and uncertainties but also to offer powerful images of the nation. At a time when the idea of a national identity is hotly debated, British theatre has made its own contribution to the debate by offering highly individual and distinctive visions of who we are and what we might want to become. In examining the work of many of the acclaimed and emerging British playwrights the book serves to provide a narrative of contemporary British playwriting. Just as their work has at times reflected disturbing truths about our national identity, Sierz shows how British playwrights are deeply involved in the project of rewriting the nation.

Author : Diana T. Kudaibergenova
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 10,48 MB
Release : 2017-02-03
Category : History
ISBN : 1498528309

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*Shortlisted for the 2018 Book Award in Social Sciences of the Central Eurasian Studies Society* Rewriting the Nation in Modern Kazakh Literature is a book about cultural transformations and trajectories of national imagination in modern Kazakhstan. The book is a much-needed critical introduction and a comprehensive survey of the Kazakh literary production and cultural discourses on the nation in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. In the absence of viable and open forums for discussion and in the turbulent moments of postcolonial and cultural transformation under the Soviets, the Kazakh writers and intellectuals widely engaged with the national identity, heritage and genealogy construction in literature. This active process of national canon construction and its constant re-writing throughout the twentieth century will inform the readers of the complex processes of cultural transformations in forms, genres and texts as well as demonstrating the genealogical development of the national narrative. The main focus of this book is on the cultural production of the nation. The focus is on the narratives of historical continuities produced in the literature and cultural discontinuities and inter-elite competition which inform such production. The development of Kazakh literary production is an extremely interesting yet underrepresented field of study. Since the late nineteenth century it saw a rapid transformation from the traditional oral to print literature. This brought an unprecedented shift in genres and texts production as well as a rapid growth of the ‘writing’ class – urban colonial and first generations of Soviet intelligentsia. Kazakh literary production became the flagman of republic’s rapid cultural modernization and prior to the World War II local publishing industry produced up to 6 million print copies a year. By the 1960s and 1970s – the golden era of Kazakh literature, the most read literary journal Juldyz sold 50,000 copies all over the country. Literature became the mass provider of knowledge about the past, the present and of the future of the country. Because “Kazakh readers were hungry to find out about their pre-Soviet past and its national glory” national writers competed in genres, styles and ways to write out the nation in prose, poems, essays and historical novels.

Author : Aleks Sierz
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 50,55 MB
Release : 2011-01-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1408145707

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This is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best new British stage plays to emerge in the new millennium. For students of theatre studies and theatre-goers Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today is a perfect companion to Britain's burgeoning theatre writing scene. It explores the context from which new plays have emerged and charts the way that playwrights have responded to the key concerns of the decade and helped shape our sense of who we are. In recent years British theatre has seen a renaissance in playwriting accompanied by a proliferation of writing awards and new writing groups. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the industry and of the key plays and playwrights. It opens by defining what is meant by 'new writing' and providing a study of the leading theatres, such as the Royal Court, the Traverse, the Bush, the Hampstead and the National theatres, together with the London fringe and the work of touring companies. In the second part, Sierz provides a fascinating survey of the main issues that have characterised new plays in the first decade of the new century, such as foreign policy and war overseas, economic boom and bust, divided communities and questions of identity and race. It considers too how playwrights have re-examined domestic issues of family, of love, of growing up, and the fantasies and nightmares of the mind. Against the backdrop of economic, political and social change under New Labour, Sierz shows how British theatre responded to these changes and in doing so has been and remains deeply involved in the project of rewriting the nation.

Author : Cynthia Vanden Driesen
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 243 pages
File Size : 20,29 MB
Release : 2009-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9401206724

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The time for new approaches to White’s work is overdue. Central to the present study are Edward Said’s ideas about the role of the intellectual (and the writer) – of speaking “truth to power,” and also the importance of tracing the “affiliations” of a text and its embeddedness in the world. This approach is not incompatible with Jung’s theory of the ‘great’ artist and his capacity to answer the deep-seated psychic needs of his people. White’s work has contributed in many different ways to the writing of the nation. The spiritual needs of a young nation such as Australia must also comprehend its continual urge towards self-definition. Explored here is one important aspect of that challenge: white Australia’s dealings with the indigenous people of the land, tracing the significance of the Aboriginal presence in three texts selected from the oeuvre of Patrick White: Voss (1957), Riders in the Chariot (1961), and A Fringe of Leaves (1976). Each of these texts interrogates European culture’s denigration of the non-European Other as embedded in the discourse of orientalism. One central merit of White’s commanding perspective is the constant close attention he pays to European hubris and to the paramount autonomy of indigenous culture. There is evidence even of a project which can be articulated as a search for the possibility of white indigeneity, the potential for the white settler’s belonging within the land as does the indigene.

Author : S.E. Wilmer
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 17,68 MB
Release : 2009-11
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1587295210

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Historians of theatre face the same temptations and challenges as other historians: they negotiate assumptions (their own and those of others) about national identity and national character; they decide what events and actors to highlight--or omit--and what framework and perspective to use for telling the story. Personal biases, trends in scholarship, and sociopolitical contexts influence all histories; and theatre histories, too, are often revised to reflect changing times and interests. This significant collection examines the problems and challenges of formulating national theatre histories.The essayists included here--leading theatre scholars from all over the world, many of whom wrote essays specifically for this volume--provide an international context for national theatre histories as well as studies of individual nations. They cover a wide geographical area: Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. The essays contrast large countries (India, Indonesia) with small (Ireland), newly independent (Slovenia) with established (U.S.A.), developed (Canada) with developing (Mexico, South Africa), capitalist (U.S.A.) with formerly communist (Russia), monolingual (Sweden) with multilingual (Belgium, Canada), and countries with stable historical boundaries (Sweden) with those whose borders have shifted (Germany).The essays also explore such sociopolitical issues as the polarization of language groups, the importance of religion, the invisibility of ethnic minorities, the redrawing of geographical borders, changes in ideology, and the dismantling of colonial legacies. Finally, they examine such common problems of history writing as types of evidence, periodization, canonization, styles of narrative, and definitions of key terms.Writing and Rewriting National Theatre Histories will be of special interest to students and scholars of theatre, cultural studies, and historiography.

Author : Bharti Arora
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 36,5 MB
Release : 2019-07-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1000094278

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This book explores the gendered contexts of the Indian nation through a rigorous analysis of selected women’s fiction ranging from diverse linguistic, geographical, caste, class, and regional contexts. Indian women’s writing across languages, texts, and contexts constitutes a unique narrative of the post-independence nation. This volume highlights the ways in which women writers negotiate the patriarchal biases embedded in the epistemological and institutional structures of the post-independence nation-state. It discusses works of famous Indian authors like Amrita Pritam, Jyotirmoyee Devi, Mannu Bhandari, Mahasweta Devi, Mridula Garg, Nayantara Sahgal, Indira Goswami, and Alka Saraogi, to name a few, and facilitates a pan-Indian understanding of the concerns taken up by these women writers. In doing so, it shows how ideas travel across regions and contribute towards building a thematic critique of the oppressive structures that breed the unequal relations between the margins and the centre. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, women’s studies, South Asian literature, political sociology, and political studies.

Author : B. Craig
Publisher : Springer
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 17,14 MB
Release : 2013-08-20
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1137337583

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Moving away from territorially-bound narratives toward a more kinetic conceptualization of identity, this book represents the first analysis of the politics of American identity within the fiction and memoirs of Isabel Allende. Craig offers a radical transformation of societal frameworks through revised notions of place, temporality, and space.

Author : Mr Neil Evans
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 44,74 MB
Release : 2014-01-28
Category : History
ISBN : 1472406605

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This is the first volume to examine how the history of Wales was written in a period that saw the emergence of professional historiography, largely focused on the nation, across Europe and in the United States. It thus sets Wales in the context of recent work on national history writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and, more particularly, offers a Welsh perspective on the ways in which history was written in small, mainly stateless, nations. The comparative dimension is fundamental to the volume's aim, highlighting what was distinctive about Welsh historical writing and showing how the Welsh experience mirrors and illuminates broader historiographical developments. The book begins with an introduction that uses the concept of historical culture as a way of exploring the different strands of historiography covered in the collection, providing orientation to the chapters that follow. These are divided into four sections: 'Contexts and Backgrounds', 'Amateurs and Popularizers', 'Creating Academic Disciplines', and 'Comparative Perspectives'. All these themes are then drawn together in the conclusion to examine how far Welsh historians exemplify widespread trends in the writing of national history, and thereby point-up common themes that emerge from the volume and clarify its broader significance for students of historiography.

Author : Ruth Livesey
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 13,38 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0198769431

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Many Victorian novels take place not in the steam-powered railway present of that era, but in the recent past: a world moving by stage and mail coach. Ruth Livesey explores the historical consciousness of such works by Dickens, Bronte, Eliot, and Hardy, and explains how they convey an idea of a national belonging through a sense of local place.