Why does Shakespearean tragedy continue to move spectators even though Elizabethan philosophical assumptions have faded from belief? Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double seeks answers in the moment-by-moment dynamics of performance and response; and the Shakespearean text signals those possibilities.Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double investigates the poetics of audience response. Approaching tragedy through the rhythms of spectatorial engagement and detachment ("aesthetic distance"); Kent Cartwright provides a performance-oriented and phenomenological perspective. Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double analyzes the development of the tragic audience as it oscillates between engagementmdash;an immersion in narrative; character; and physical actionmdash;and detachmentmdash;a consciousness of its own comparative judgments; its doubts; and of acting and theatricality. Cartwright contends that the spectator emerges as a character implied and acted upon by the play. He supports his theory with close readings of individual plays from the perspective of a particular element of spectatorial response: the carnivalesque qualities of Romeo and Juliet; the rhythm of similitude; displacement; and wonder in the audiences relationships to Hamlet; aesthetic distance as scenic structure in Othello; the influence of secondary characters and ensemble acting on the Quarto King Lear; and spectatorship as action itself in Antony and Cleopatra.Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Double treats the dramatic moment in Shakespearean tragedy as uncommonly charged; various; indeterminate; always negotiating unpredictably between the necessary and the spontaneous. Cartwright argues that; for the audience; the very dynamism of tragedy confers a certain enfranchisement; and the spectators experience emerges as analogous to; though different from; that of the protagonist. Through its own engagement and detachments the audience becomes the final performer creating the plays meaning.
#4133413 in eBooks 2015-08-21 2015-08-21File Name: B014GAT4BU
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