Portuguese drama studies
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Recent papers in Portuguese drama studies
The maturity of the dramatic genre is marked by the form as it was re-defined in each time and along the history of the theater. The exercise of writing stimulated by the stage, and there returning, demonstrates the interconnection... more
The maturity of the dramatic genre is marked by the form as it was re-defined in each time and along the history of the theater. The exercise of writing stimulated by the stage, and there returning, demonstrates the interconnection between the authorial thought and his stage execution. The theater is born in the fantasy of the author’s mind, who, besides the fable, dreams about a communication support for it. The dizziness of the conscience and the plurimodal inscription of the playwright in the stage act are a challenging processus for many Portuguese playwrights. This essay has to do with the effect of the narrative paradox of drama in some authors like Gil Vicente, José Daniel Rodrigues da Costa, António Pedro or José Pedro de Andrade.
From the book back cover: With An Oedipus – The Untold Story: A Ghostly Mythodrama in One Act, Armando Nascimento Rosa brings a 2.500 year old tale into the 21st century. Taking on millennia of literary tradition and a century of... more
From the book back cover:
With An Oedipus – The Untold Story: A Ghostly Mythodrama in One Act, Armando Nascimento Rosa brings a 2.500 year old tale into the 21st century. Taking on millennia of literary tradition and a century of psychoanalytic theory, Rosa casts Oedipus, the legendary ill-fated Theban king whose name Sigmund Freud turned into a household word, in a bold, new light that challenges and provokes even as it entertains with a satyrical touch. Ghosts, spirit possessions, shamanism, and psychology come together in a dizzying array that subjects readers and viewers of the play alike to a very peculiar Gnostic experience.
Where Freud made incest the defining feature of the Oedipus complex, Nascimento Rosa, inspired by C. G. Jung, looks beyond the complex to its archetypal roots. Probing deeper into the tragic hero’s family history, the Portuguese playwright finds the source of the doomed man’s fate in the now-forgotten crime of his father, Laius, namely, Laius’s abduction (and sexual assault) of Pelops’s young son, Chrysippus, long before Oedipus was born. The play unfolds in the manner of a psychotherapy session in which repressed memories are brought to consciousness and deep, dark secrets are revealed. Following James Hillman and others, Rosa sees the Oedipus complex as part of a broader matrix of complexes, one that includes the less-well-known “Laius complex” – the desire of fathers to kill their sons pre-emptively for fear of being upstaged by them. Pushing off the literalism of his characters (and of Freud), Rosa seeks to uncover the archetypal dimensions of the tragedy, drawing readers and viewers of the the play to a less literal, more imaginal understanding of human passions and desires.
Published and staged in Portugal, in 2003 (Lisbon, Teatro da Comuna, directed by Miguel Loureiro), in its original version in Portuguese, this is the first-ever publication (2006) of the English translation of An Oedipus (translated by Luis Toledo, revised by Michael Mendis in collaboration with the author), which premiered in UK, in 2006 (London, Queen Anne Court, The University of Greenwich, directed by Pippa Guard) . The text of the play is framed by a Foreword by Susan Rowland (at the time, Reader in English and Jungian Studies, at the University of Greenwich, UK; now Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life MA, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA), an afterword by Rosa himself, and two critical essays, one by Marvin Carlson (Distinguished Professor, The City University of New York Graduate Center, NY, USA), the other by Christine Downing (Professor. Mythological Studies Doctoral Program, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA).
With An Oedipus – The Untold Story: A Ghostly Mythodrama in One Act, Armando Nascimento Rosa brings a 2.500 year old tale into the 21st century. Taking on millennia of literary tradition and a century of psychoanalytic theory, Rosa casts Oedipus, the legendary ill-fated Theban king whose name Sigmund Freud turned into a household word, in a bold, new light that challenges and provokes even as it entertains with a satyrical touch. Ghosts, spirit possessions, shamanism, and psychology come together in a dizzying array that subjects readers and viewers of the play alike to a very peculiar Gnostic experience.
Where Freud made incest the defining feature of the Oedipus complex, Nascimento Rosa, inspired by C. G. Jung, looks beyond the complex to its archetypal roots. Probing deeper into the tragic hero’s family history, the Portuguese playwright finds the source of the doomed man’s fate in the now-forgotten crime of his father, Laius, namely, Laius’s abduction (and sexual assault) of Pelops’s young son, Chrysippus, long before Oedipus was born. The play unfolds in the manner of a psychotherapy session in which repressed memories are brought to consciousness and deep, dark secrets are revealed. Following James Hillman and others, Rosa sees the Oedipus complex as part of a broader matrix of complexes, one that includes the less-well-known “Laius complex” – the desire of fathers to kill their sons pre-emptively for fear of being upstaged by them. Pushing off the literalism of his characters (and of Freud), Rosa seeks to uncover the archetypal dimensions of the tragedy, drawing readers and viewers of the the play to a less literal, more imaginal understanding of human passions and desires.
Published and staged in Portugal, in 2003 (Lisbon, Teatro da Comuna, directed by Miguel Loureiro), in its original version in Portuguese, this is the first-ever publication (2006) of the English translation of An Oedipus (translated by Luis Toledo, revised by Michael Mendis in collaboration with the author), which premiered in UK, in 2006 (London, Queen Anne Court, The University of Greenwich, directed by Pippa Guard) . The text of the play is framed by a Foreword by Susan Rowland (at the time, Reader in English and Jungian Studies, at the University of Greenwich, UK; now Chair of the Engaged Humanities and the Creative Life MA, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA), an afterword by Rosa himself, and two critical essays, one by Marvin Carlson (Distinguished Professor, The City University of New York Graduate Center, NY, USA), the other by Christine Downing (Professor. Mythological Studies Doctoral Program, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA).