Timetable
Wednesday 1 February – 19 March (block 3): 11-13 hr.
Wednesday 29 March – 21 May (block 4): 9-11 hr.
Lipsius building, room 208
Method of instruction
The course starts with six sessions of collective reading (with texts from Tracy Davis & Thomas Postlewait, Michael Fried, Elizabeth Burns, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Walter Benjamin, Mieke Bal, Maaike Bleeker et al.). Then we have a break in which people will have the time to think what they want to do.
Description
The field of literary studies and art history knows many concepts that appear to defy a clear cut definition and theatricality is one of them. When the term is used in a relatively straightforward way, as if we all seem to understand what theatricality means, it starts to become almost meaningless. This course therefore aims, firstly, to introduce students to the concept of theatricality and to the various ways in which scholars have dealt with it. We then proceed, secondly, to a truly scholarly choice: students will have to decide for themselves which kind of theatricality they find useful in relation to what kind of topic or object. As we will see, theatricality is a concept that operates in an interdisciplinary field of theatre, literature, art, architecture, and even more broadly: the urban landscape. It cannot be thought outside of the interaction between politics and aesthetics, or outside of the dynamic between individual and collective. It operates on the thresholds between the real and the imaginary, and though seemingly predominantly visual, it cannot be thought apart from a tactile, sensuous environment. Last but not least, theatricality concerns both the specific moment and history, both the social body and the association of human subject with objects in space.
We will address the specific forms of theatricality characteristic for the medieval and early modern period, but will also rub these historical manifestations against modern theory, which, after all, led to the fruitful conceptualisation of theatricality.
Examination
Students will send in an abstract and get comments, after which we get together for a two days seminar with presentations.
These can be worked, finally, into a paper.