Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press Ebook Collection

University of Michigan Press
Ebook Collection

Browse Books Help
Get access to more books. Log in with your institution.

Your use of this Platform is subject to the Fulcrum Terms of Service.

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage

Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage

Sarah Balkin
Restricted You don't have access to this book. Please try to log in with your institution. Log in
Read Book Buy Book
  • Overview

  • Contents

Theater's materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by costumes, settings, props, and spoken dialogue. Examining work by Ibsen, Wilde, Strindberg, Genet, Kopit, and Beckett, the book takes up the apparent deadness of characters whose selves are made of other people, whose thoughts become exteriorized communication technologies, and whose bodies merge with walls and furniture. The ghostly, vampiric, and telepathic qualities of these characters, Sarah Balkin argues, mark a new relationship between the material and the imaginary in modern theater. By considering characters whose bodies respond to language, whose attempts to realize their individuality collapse into inanimacy, and who sometimes don't appear at all, the book posits a new genealogy of modernist drama that emphasizes its continuities with nineteenth-century melodrama and realism.
  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Spectral Individual
  • Chapter 2. Imaginary Characters
  • Chapter 3. Language and Materiality
  • Chapter 4. Old New Materialisms
  • Chapter 5. Modernist Afterlives
  • Notes
  • Works Cited
  • Index
Citable Link
Published: 2019
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-13148-8 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-472-12582-1 (ebook)
Subject
  • Theater and Performance
  • Literary Studies:19th Century Literature
  • Literary Studies:Modern Literature
  • Literary Studies:20th Century Literature

Resources

Search and Filter Resources

Filter search results by

Section

  • Chapter 11
  • Chapter 31
  • Chapter 42
  • Chapter 51
Filter search results by

Keyword

  • August Strindberg2
  • 19061
  • 20131
  • Anders Beer Wilse1
  • Arthur Kopit1
  • more Keyword »
Filter search results by

Creator

  • Haeckel, Ernst1
  • Ibsen, Henrik1
  • Kopit, Arthur1
  • Strindberg, August1
  • Unknown1
Filter search results by

Format

  • image5

Search Constraints

1 - 5 of 5
  • First Appearance
  • Section (Earliest First)
  • Section (Last First)
  • Format (A-Z)
  • Format (Z-A)
  • Year (Oldest First)
  • Year (Newest First)
Number of results to display per page
  • 10 per page
  • 20 per page
  • 50 per page
  • 100 per page
View results as:
List Gallery

Search Results

Fig. 1.: Photograph of set of 1901 production of Rosmersholm at Nationaltheateret, by Anders Beer Wilse.

Photo of Rosmersholm set (1906)

From Chapter 1

Fig. 1. The set of a 1901 production of Rosmersholm at Nationaltheateret, Oslo, photographed by Anders Beer Wilse. Image courtesy of Norsk Folkemuseum.

Fig. 2.: Photograph of Daniel Davis as Edgar and Derek Smith as Gustav in Red Bull Theater's 2013 New York City production of The Dance of Death, by Carol Rosegg.

Photo of The Dance of Death, Red Bull Theater (2013)

From Chapter 3

Fig. 2. Daniel Davis as Edgar and Derek Smith as Gustav in Red Bull Theater’s 2013 New York City production of The Dance of Death. Photo by Carol Rosegg. Image courtesy of Red Bull Theater.

Fig. 3.: Photograph of Lift at the Blue Tower, where Strindberg lived when he wrote The Black Glove, by Sarah Balkin (2009)

Photo of elevator at Blue Tower, Stockholm

From Chapter 4

Fig. 3. The lift at the Blue Tower, where Strindberg lived when he wrote The Black Glove. Photograph by Sarah Balkin (2009).

Fig. 4.: Illustration of Ciliata, a type of protist illustrated in Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

Ciliata, Kunstformen der Natur (1904)

From Chapter 4

Fig. 4. Ciliata, a type of protist illustrated in Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1904).

Fig. 5.: Photograph of Austin Pendleton as Jonathan Rosepettle in the 1962 off-Broadway production of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad.

Photo of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad

From Chapter 5

Fig. 5. Austin Pendleton as Jonathan Rosepettle in the 1962 off-Broadway production of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. Image courtesy of Arthur Kopit Papers, Fales Library, NYU.

University of Michigan Press Contact Us

UMP EBC

  • Browse and Search
  • About UMP EBC
  • Impact and Usage

Follow Us

  • UMP EBC Newsletter
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube

Quicklinks

  • Help/FAQ
  • Title List
  • MARC Records
  • KBART Records
  • Usage Stats
© 2023, Regents of the University of Michigan · Accessibility · Preservation · Privacy · Terms of Service
Powered by Fulcrum logo · Log In
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.