This exciting new book offers practical resources and lesson plans for exploring gender in the drama curriculum. It looks at how theatre performances throughout history have played with the concept of identity and gender and explains why drama lessons can provide a safe and considerate space for thinking about gender.Drawing on theatre history, world theatre, theatre forms and theatre theory, each chapter focuses on key topics that will challenge students to play and explore gender...

This major study reconstructs the vast history of European drama from Greek tragedy through to twentieth-century theatre, focusing on the subject of identity. Throughout history, drama has performed and represented political, religious, national, ethnic, class-related, gendered, and individual concepts of identity.Erika Fischer-Lichte's topics include:* ancient Greek theatre* Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre by Corneilli, Racine, Molière* the Italian commed...

In this marvelous book, acclaimed around the world, Alberto Manguel takes us on a fascinating exploration of what it means to be a reader of books. A History of Reading is a brilliant reminder of why we cherish the act of reading—despite distractions throughout the ages, from the Inquisition to the lures of cyberspace. He shows us what happens when we read; who we become; and how reading teaches us how to live. He reminds us that we live in books as well as among them—how we find ...

`Anyone who wants to gain a quick idea of how before me everything was topsy-turvy should make a start with this work. That which is called idol on the title-page is quite simply that which was called truth hitherto. Twilight of the Idols - in plain words: the old truth is coming to an end...' Nietzsche intended Twilight of the Idols to serve as a short introduction to his philosophy, and as a result it is the most synoptic of all his books. Continuing in the spirit of it...

“A splendidly pithy and provocative introduction to the culture of Romanticism.”—The Sunday Times“[Tim Blanning is] in a particularly good position to speak of the arrival of Romanticism on the Euorpean scene, and he does so with a verve, a breadth, and an authority that exceed every expectation.”—National ReviewFrom the preeminent historian of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries comes a superb, concise accou...

'I am not a man, I am dynamite.' Ecce Homo is an autobiography like no other. Deliberately provocative, Nietzsche subverts the conventions of the genre and pushes his philosophical positions to combative extremes, constructing a genius-hero whose life is a chronicle of incessant self-overcoming. Written in 1888, a few weeks before his descent into madness, the book sub-titled 'How To Become What You Are' passes under review all Nietzsche's previous works so that w...

This collection of essays by the acclaimed author of Cosmicomics offers a fascinating, personal journey through some of literature's greatest works.Classics, according to Italo Calvino, are not only works of enduring cultural value, but also personal touchstones. They are the books we are always rereading in order to understand our world and ourselves. Here, Calvino introduces more than thirty works from his own ideal library in essays of warmth, humor, an...

'Yes, what is Dionysian? - This book provides an answer - "a man who knows" speaks in it, the initiate and disciple of his god.' The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a book about the origins of Greek tragedy and its relevance to the German culture of its time. For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy is the expression of a culture which has achieved a delicate but powerful balance between Dionysian insight into the chaos and suffering which underlies all existence and the discipline and clarity of rational ...

"This curiously moving history . . . traces the development of collections since the Renaissance through lively portraits of famous collectors." — The New YorkerFrom amassing sacred relics to collecting celebrity memorabilia, the impulse to hoard has gripped humankind throughout the centuries. But what is it that drives people to possess objects that have no conceivable use? To Have and To Hold is a captivating tour of collectors and their treasur...

In 1878 the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold wrote: 'Goethe is the greatest poet of modern times... because having a very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism of life, by far our greatest modern man.' In this Very Short Introduction Ritchie Robertson covers the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): scientist, administrator, artist, art critic and supreme literary writer in a vast variety of genr...

Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as Artist'.Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behind the social comedies, as the creator of the beautiful and doomed Dorian Gray, as the flamboyant aesthete and the demonised homosexual. This volume presents us with a different Wilde. Wilde emerges here as a deep and serious reader of lit...

Philosophy, art, literature, music, and politics were all transformed in the turbulent period between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Communist Manifesto of 1848.This was the age of the 'Romantic revolution', when modern attitudes to political and artistic freedom were born.When we think of Romanticism, flamboyant figures such as Byron or Shelley instantly spring to mind, but what about Napoleon or Hegel, Turner or Blake, Wagner or Marx?How was...