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Prolegomenon to the Study of Dramatic and Theatrical Theory

出版	University of Toronto, 1995
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=FP2JtgAACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Modern dramatic theory has alternated between extremes in its attempts to locate theatre within literature. Either theatre has been viewed as a pre-literate, ritualistic phenomenon which writing can only compromise, or it has been seen as essentially "textual," with even physical performance subsumable under the aegis of textuality. At the heart of this dispute lies the question of the relationship between writing and theatre, a relationship which must be clarified as a prerequisite for any coherent theory of drama. The solution proposed by this work is to return to the historical context in which Western theatre emerged out of epic recitation. A comparison between the performance style of oral epic and that of the newly emergent art of the theatre will show the extent to which drama was influenced by the literate technologies which were unknown to Homer yet well-attested for the age of Aeschylus. This dissertation proceeds through detailed analysis of such literate practices as the use of the alphabet, the use of texts in education, the public inscription of laws, the sending and receiving of letters, the use of coins, the inscribing of ostraka, and the making of lists. Concurrently, the innovations in performative storytelling represented by theatre are explored, and their indebtedness to the technology of writing is evaluated. It is found that writing enabled and encouraged the emergence of a new kind of performance. Stories once only heard became visible; stories once delivered monologically by a bard were atomised into discrete representing units (actors); performers became non-specialists, and poets became interrogators of myth rather than its divine repositories. However, although writing helped to create dramatic form, textuality was never an end in itself, but remained always in the service in an oral process of bodily performance which can neither be described according to textual models nor completely controlled by them. Theatrical form is one of writing's great products, but also one of its most effective critics.