
Memory of the Body
Essays on Theater and Death
Jan Kott(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Published on 30. May 1992
Book
Hardback
153 pages
978-0-8101-1019-9 (ISBN)
Description
To see through the eyes of essayist and dramaturge Jan Kott is to gain in knowledge not just of the theater but also of human culture. Since his Shakespeare Our Contemporary appeared in English in 1964, Kott's work has altered--and strengthened--the way critics and the public approach the theater as a whole. The Memory of the Body highlights a number of dramatic personalities and personages: authors and directors Witkiewicz, Brecht, Kantor, Grotoswki, Ingmar Bergman, Wedekind; Tilly Newes on the stage in turn-of-the-century Vienna; the all-too-mortal, two-thirds divine Gilgamesh; and a shaman in rural Korea. In a style flecked with passion, poignancy, and wit, Kott moves beyond a mere discussion of theater to speak of eroticism, painting, love, and death.
Reviews / Votes
"Kott is a truly outstanding drama critic of a type which goes back to Dr. Johnson, Lessing, Coleridge, Hazlitt, or Edmund Wilson. . . . He has the gift of seeing connections between literature, philosophy, anthropology, political theory, and psychology which are only open to so widely read and so cultured a mind as his."-Martin Esslin
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Weight
825 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-1019-9 (9780810110199)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jan Kott, formerly professor of literature at the University of Warsaw, left Poland for the United States in 1966. He has taught at Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, as well as overseas in Japan, at the Catholic University at Louvain in Belgium, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1964 he received the Herder Award in Vienna, and in 1984 the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. His other books include The Theater of Essence, The Bottom Translation, The Eating of the Gods, and Four Decades of Polish Essays (editor), all published by Northwestern University Press.
Content
Acknowledgments
Part I
The Dramaturge
A Lesson in Directing
Simulators
The Voice of Cassandra: On Stempowski
Lec and His Aphorisms
On Bombrowicz and Schulz
Kantor's Kaddish
Kantor, Memory, Memoire (1915-90)
Mrozek's Emigres
Grotowski, or The Limit
Part II
A Short Treatise on Eroticism
Aloe
A Short Treatise on Dying
The Sexual Triangle
In the Kitchen of a Shamaness
The Heart Attack
The Memory of the Body
Part III
Gilgamesh or Mortality
Index
Part I
The Dramaturge
A Lesson in Directing
Simulators
The Voice of Cassandra: On Stempowski
Lec and His Aphorisms
On Bombrowicz and Schulz
Kantor's Kaddish
Kantor, Memory, Memoire (1915-90)
Mrozek's Emigres
Grotowski, or The Limit
Part II
A Short Treatise on Eroticism
Aloe
A Short Treatise on Dying
The Sexual Triangle
In the Kitchen of a Shamaness
The Heart Attack
The Memory of the Body
Part III
Gilgamesh or Mortality
Index