Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed the most fundamental one we have. It has been used by both playwrights and theorists of many periods, and interpreted, in the course of its two thousand years of life, in various ways. The literature which has accumulated around it is, as Mr. Fergusson points out, "full of disputes so erudite that the nonspecialist can only look on in respectful silence." But the Poetics itself is still with us, in all its suggestiveness, for the modern...
Introduced by Francis Fergusson, the Poetics, written in the fourth century B.C., is still an essential study of the art of drama, indeed th...
Francis Fergusson was one of the foremost American literary critics and scholars of the twentieth century. A man of the theater as well as a man of letters, Fergusson's versatility and mastery traversed a wide range of intellectual disciplines. As George Core notes: "one of the most remarkable aspects of Fergusson's criticism is that it stands comfortably, at ease, with the best work stemming from diverse schools of criticism that are sometimes in conflict--the New Critics, the New York intellectuals, the myth critics and various distinguished critics of the modern theater." Though allied...
Francis Fergusson was one of the foremost American literary critics and scholars of the twentieth century. A man of the theater as well as a man of...
At odds with the view that Shakespeare was a religious skeptic who only paid lip service to religious beliefs to pacify his less perceptive audience, Francis Fergusson investigates a relationship between Shakespeare and Dante, whom he sees as writing out of the same classical Christian heritage. Fergusson explores analogous themes from several Shakespearean plays and parts of Dante's "Divine Comedy." These themes are romantic love and faith in it; treachery and its recognition; a commonsense view of secular government and a belief in the necessity of right rule for right government; and...
At odds with the view that Shakespeare was a religious skeptic who only paid lip service to religious beliefs to pacify his less perceptive audience, ...
The individual insights employed in this reading of the Purgatorio are those of a twentieth-century mind, as are the author's references: T. S. Eliot, Henry James, I.A. Richards, Jacques Maritain, and many others. Purposely avoiding the pitfalls of Dantean scholarship, Mr. Fergusson reveals the drama of the order of Dante's vision, the developed form of the poetry, and the meaning of the canticle for modern man. "The Purgatorio," he says, "has light to shed upon history and its making; upon psychology, ethics, and education; upon politics and the transmission of our...
The individual insights employed in this reading of the Purgatorio are those of a twentieth-century mind, as are the author's references: T....
An original and beautifully written book on changing perspectives in the art of theater. Through a study of nine plays--Oedipus Rex, Berenice, Tristan und Isolde, Hamlet, Ghosts, The Cherry Orchard, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Noah, Murder in the Cathedral--the author shows how all playwrights seek to "hold the mirror up to nature" and how in this respect the art of drama is always the same, varying only with the philosophical and aesthetic concepts of each age. The Idea of a Theater will delight both readers with a special interest in drama and those who read...
An original and beautifully written book on changing perspectives in the art of theater. Through a study of nine plays--Oedipus Rex, Berenice, T...
