‘The Rule of Men Entirely Great’: Republicanism,Ritual, and Richelieu in Melville’s ‘The Two Temples’

Abstract

This article explores the complex and multifarious reasons behind Herman Melville’s decision to refer to the English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 work Richelieu, or The Conspiracy in his 1854 diptych ‘The Two Temples’. It responds to a critical consensus that has seen the reference merely as a sarcastic attack on William Macready (whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest was the nominal cause of the bloody 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York), by contextualizing the play within traditions of antebellum American Anglophilia. By using a combination of new critical work on Anglo-Americanism and anthropological ritual theory, I show how Bulwer-Lytton’s play was significant to Melville’s artistic development. In particular, I demonstrate how the play influenced his increasing engagement with republican and theatrical forms of expression that emphasized the importance of filial relationships between America and Britain in a period of increasing hostility between the two nations.     

Social work and applied theatre: creative experiences with a group of homeless people in the city of Seville

This article presents a series of creative social intervention experiences developed with a group of homeless people in the Spanish city of Seville. These experiences are part of an applied research project that uses theatre as a tool to aid social work, and they are led by a group of homeless people who have become actors through this initiative. The group is known as ‘Theatre of Inclusion’ and has been running for a decade now. Using group social work and applied theatre techniques, this initiative creatively exposes the needs of this collective and also generates spaces in which they can reclaim their dignity. The systematisation of these experiences highlights the potential of combining disciplines such as social work and theatre to work with vulnerable collectives, in the same way Jane Addams did. The aim is also to move beyond the dominant welfare proposals in place in Spain currently, which are intended to meet the needs of homeless people.     

Reclaiming ourselves through Testimonio pedagogy: reflections on a curriculum design lab in teacher education

This article details one teacher preparation course centering Latin American Testimonio narratives of struggle/survival amid structural oppression for use in secondary curriculum. As our class of predominantly Latina/o students and two Latina instructors engaged Testimonio pedagogy, we fashioned a hopeful alternative to our own experiences of intergenerational oppression. While research indicates that the experiences and histories of pre-service Teachers of Color lend pedagogical strength and critical consciousness to teacher education, three Latina pre-service students highlight the ways in which Testimonio became more than a pedagogical approach. Testimonio’s collectivity, resistance, hope, and assertions of voice and dignity moved through them not as educators first but as (great-grand)daughters of oppressed though still-resilient People(s). Testimonio emboldened these Latina pre-service educators to recognize and validate their own inherited multiliteracies, (re)claim their connectedness to land, and articulate their visions for more equitable schooling. This work advances research into the essentiality of engaging race and ethnicity in K-12 and teacher education curriculum and pedagogy.     

‘Are you gonna show this to white people?’: Chicana/o and Latina/o students’ counter-narratives on race,place, and representation

This article explores the recurring narratives on race, place and representation that emerged in the talk of Chicana/o and Latina/o sixth-graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles, California. Discourse analytic methods are used to closely examine how these narratives were constructed within the contexts of everyday classroom interactions. Drawing on the notion of counter-storytelling from critical race theory, the article highlights how these sixth-grade students articulated counter-narratives about who they were and what their community was like – often in direct opposition to what they perceived as white people’s stereotypical assumptions and misperceptions. It is argued that these narratives constitute a powerful and sophisticated critique of dominant narratives that frame working-class Chicana/o and Latina/o students in racist and pejorative terms. The article ends with a discussion of implications for understanding youth agency and the politics of representation.     

抗战时期桂糊社团的演进及其贡献

抗战时期桂林文化城戏剧社团的组织形式及特点,不仅反映了抗战时期戏剧体制和机制的发展特色,而且体现了中国戏剧现代化的历史面貌。桂林文化城的戏剧刊物,在传播戏剧理论、总结戏剧艺术实践经验方面,积极地推动过中国抗战戏剧运动。     

Crying for Food: The Mexican Myths of ‘La Llorona’ and ‘The Hungry Woman’ in Cherríe L. Moraga

The Mexican legend of ‘La Llorona’ (‘The Weeping Woman’), who drowned her children out of revenge for being abandoned by her lover, and the Aztec creation myth of ‘The Hungry Woman’ — crying constantly for food, with mouths all around her body — have inspired Chicana writers in the symbolic representation of their own yearning, be it sexual, identity-building, or anti-patriarchal. This essay seeks to lay the mythical groundwork within this topic, as well as to illustrate with some particular examples the different reappropriations of these myths in Cherríe L. Moraga, mainly in her play The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea (2001). With a view to opening up a past ‘that can provide a kind of road map to our future’ (: ix), these examples of transgressive women will be deprived of the feminine colonial passivity imbued by the dominant male discourse, and analysed as a complex, active, polyvalent mythological female corpus that integrates both life and death, womb and grave. This hybrid approach is inherent to the Aztec mythology on which Moraga relies in order to transcend Manichaeistic resolutions and probe the social, political, and gender reasons leading a hungry mother to commit infanticide.     

荒诞派戏剧的荒诞性

兴起于二战前后的荒诞派戏剧与传统戏剧有很大的区别,即以荒诞的形式表达荒诞的内容。荒诞的形式主要体现在:第一,没有通常的戏剧情节,只有一种情势;第二,没有人物刻画;第三,舞台的象征化。其形式表达了荒诞的主题:人的异化;深刻的虚无感;人荒诞的生存状态。     

《恋爱的犀牛》与孟京辉的戏剧探索

孟京辉导演的《恋爱的犀牛》一剧让人看到了中国先锋戏剧在商业上的巨大成功,从1999年到现在,该剧已经有了四个版本。本文试图对新版本与之前版本的不同做一些比较。通过分析可以看出,该剧的最大特点在于诗化与狂欢的交杂,以及形式上的不断做加法。尽管这种改变有得失,然而,孟京辉在实践中达成了自己关于人民戏剧的理想,他的这种努力值得我们肯定。     

《梨园春》对文化艺术事业的影响和启示

文章针对河南卫视推出的电视栏目《梨园春》走红这一文化现象，利用大量的实地考察资料，探讨了该现象所涉及的戏曲艺术的创作、戏曲文化与电视传媒的联姻、文化市场的发展和规范以及电视观众的审美导向等诸多问题。     

《穿戴题纲》与清代宫廷演剧

《穿戴题纲》是一部非常珍贵的清代宫廷戏剧史料,记录了演出戏服、演出剧目和演出节令等信息,对于研究清代宫廷演剧形态弥足珍贵。它既有助于我们了解清宫的演剧历史、演剧服饰、演剧习俗,还有助于研究宫廷演剧对民间演剧乃至整个中国戏剧发展史的影响。