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"Farce"
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Melodrama and Farce in the Tourist Resort: A Southern European Perspective
In this article, I examine the narrative strategies of representing major transformations along Europe’s Mediterranean shores. My focus is on the beach as a contested environment in which the natural and the social, as well as the private and the communal, confront each other. I argue that contemporary Catalan, Spanish, French, Italian, and Greek novels use tourism and the hyper-urbanization of the beach as gateways to explore questions of identity, historical meaning, and the Mediterranean’s place in Europe and the world. By analyzing the tourist resort as a specific narrative site, I investigate the interplay between historical perceptions, environmental imaginings, and narrative form. Through close readings of Metin Arditi’s L’enfant qui mesurait le monde and Massimo Maugeri’s Trinacria Park, I highlight the challenges of capturing the complexity of the social construction of Southern European shores in a single narrative. While Arditi tackles the Greek crisis through melodrama and nostalgia for ruins, Maugeri traces a Sicilian island’s historical development from tragedy to farce and, eventually, disaster. Ultimately, my article seeks to contribute to a better understanding of narrative perceptions of modernization in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
Journal Article
Polemic, Diatribe, and Farce: Jaina Postures vis-a-vis Sectarian Others in the Kannada Texts of Nayasena, Brahmasiva, and Vrttavilasa
The Deccan in the first half of the second millennium is marked by political and religious ferment. The Cōḻas, Gaṅgas, Rāṣṭrakūṭas, and Cāḷukyas are contesting its mundane territory, while the Śaivas, Jainas, and Vaiṣṇavas are contesting its spiritual geography. Unlike the interactions of the earthly rulers which spill real blood, the bloodshed of the spiritual gurus is merely metaphorical. But, the animosity driving their interactions is no less intense, for survival is at stake for them just as it is for their secular counterparts. In this essay, I explore the Jaina point of view in sectarian contestations between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries through the texts of three Kannada authors: Dharmāṁṛtam of Nayasēna (1112CE), Samayaparīkṣe of Brahmaśiva (c.1200CE), and Dharmaparīkṣe of Vṛttavilāsa (c.1360CE). My objective is to identify the sectarian ‘other’ that these authors address, dispute with and vilify, and to explore the changing nature of this sectarian ‘other’ and the shifting attitudes of these authors towards their opponents.
Journal Article
Mocking the Myth: From Philip Roth to Word Smith
Often read together with Our Gang (1971) and equally dismissed as a minor and rather frivolous piece in Philip Roth’s impressive body of work, The Great American Novel (1973) may well be the most intertextual of his writings. The proposed paper will provide insight into the ways in which Roth’s farcical creativity, alongside his undeniable erudition, bring forth and challenge the (American) literary tradition and conventional approaches to (hi)storytelling. Given the rather limited critical attention the novel has received in the half-century since its publication, the main aim is to prompt a reconsideration of the status of this book in Roth’s oeuvre.
Journal Article
Asignatura pendiente: Tlatelolco, el teatro y la farsa de la justicia
El 2 de octubre de 2018 marcó la quincuagésima conmemoración de la masacre del aún desconocido número de estudiantes, transeúntes y otros inocentes en la Plaza de las Tres Culturas de Tlatelolco. Como siempre, el programa cultural del Memorial 68 incluyó varias producciones teatrales, pero esta vez llamó la atención el uso casi exclusivo de la farsa como modo de expresión dramática. La farsa tiende a ser burlona, irreverente y alejada de la realidad, lo que lleva a preguntarse por qué tantos dramaturgos han recurrido a este género antiguo y poco respetado para tratar un capítulo tan doloroso y álgido de la historia mexicana. Este estudio se fundamenta en la teoría de la farsa, la tragedia y la risa y en la percepción extendida de la misma historia mexicana como una farsa. Aunque el uso de la farsa como vehículo para una conmemoración tan significante podría sorprender y hasta ofender, el análisis de cinco obras comprueba que la farsa es últimamente la expresión más realista del ciclo absurdo y sin fin de la historia mexicana, la que ha mostrado repetidamente que se puede matar con impunidad tanto a estudiantes como a todos los que se oponen al orden establecido. October 2, 2018, marked the fiftieth commemoration of the massacre of a yet-undisclosed number of students, local residents, and other innocent bystanders in Mexico City’s Plaza de Tlatelolco. As usual, the annual Memorial 68 organized by the UNAM (National Autonomous University) included several theatre productions, but this time around the plays were primarily and surprisingly farcical in nature. Although the use of a genre commonly considered derisive, irreverent, and unrealistic to commemorate such a painful and pivotal chapter in Mexican history may seem insensitive and perhaps even offensive, the presentation of five farces related to 1968 in the fall of 2018 confirms that farce is ultimately the most realistic and effective vehicle for staging the widespread perception of Mexican history as an absurd, endless cycle in which those who dare to defy or disrupt the established order are simply eliminated with impunity.
Journal Article
Rabelais's Radical Farce
In the first extended investigation of the importance of dramatic farce in Rabelais studies, Bruce Hayes makes an important contribution to the understanding of the theater of farce and its literary possibilities. By tracing the development of farce in late medieval and Renaissance comedic theater in comparison to the evolution of farce in Rabelais's work, Hayes distinguishes Rabelais's use of the device from traditional farce. While traditional farce is primarily conservative in its aims, with an emphasis on maintaining the status quo, Rabelais puts farce to radical new uses, making it subversive in his own work.
Bruce Hayes examines the use of farce in Pantagruel, Gargantua, and the Tiers and Quart livres, showing how Rabelais recast farce in a humanist context, making it a vehicle for attacking the status quo and posing alternatives to contemporary legal, educational, and theological systems.
Rabelais's Radical Farce illustrates the rich possibilities of a genre often considered simplistic and unsophisticated, disclosing how Rabelais in fact introduced both a radical reformulation of farce, and a new form of humanist satire.
eBook
Valle-Inclan
Las galas del difunto/ The Dead Man's Finery (1926) and La hija del capitán/ The Captain's Daughter (1927) are two of four tragic farceswritten by Ramón del Valle-Inclán for the theatre. Translated here for the first time into English, the plays demonstrate the dramatist's evolving theory of the esperpento as a satirical genre.
eBook
