Irony and the Modern Theatre

William Storm author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:2nd Feb '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Irony and the Modern Theatre cover

Covering major playwrights including Ibsen, Brecht and Chekhov, William Storm presents a comprehensive investigation of irony's significance in the modern theatre.

William Storm explores the significance of irony in the modern theatre, investigating major works by playwrights including Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht. Focusing on well-known representative characters, from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to Stoppard's Septimus Hodge, he demonstrates how these key theatrical figures enact, embody and personify irony.Irony and theatre share intimate kinships, not only regarding dramatic conflict, dialectic or wittiness, but also scenic structure and the verbal or situational ironies that typically mark theatrical speech and action. Yet irony today, in aesthetic, literary and philosophical contexts especially, is often regarded with skepticism - as ungraspable, or elusive to the point of confounding. Countering this tendency, William Storm advocates a wide-angle view of this master trope, exploring the ironic in major works by playwrights including Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht, and in notable relation to well-known representative characters in drama from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to Stoppard's Septimus Hodge and Wasserstein's Heidi Holland. To the degree that irony is existential, its presence in the theatre relates directly to the circumstances and the expressiveness of the characters on stage. This study investigates how these key figures enact, embody, represent and personify the ironic in myriad situations in the modern and contemporary theatre.

'… a discerning commentary … William Storm's Irony and the Modern Theatre revisits some well-mapped territory, surveying as it does the nature and purpose of irony in selected dramatic texts from Ibsen to Tony Kushner.' Modern Philology

ISBN: 9781316632413

Dimensions: 230mm x 153mm x 15mm

Weight: 400g

268 pages