Comp. Lit. 86200 – Seminar in Theatre Theory and Criticism: European Avant-Garde 1890-1918
Prof. Gerould

Starting with Mallarmé, Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s Axel, and Maeterlinck’s early plays, the seminar will focus on Symbolism (and its early variant Decadence)— particularly in theatre, but also with emphasis on developments in poetry and fiction—as the first international avant-garde to challenge the reigning principles of realism and naturalism and as a pivotal stage in the evolution of modernism, despite its apparently anti-modern stance. Restoring to the drama its perennial concerns with the supernatural and the spiritual, the Symbolist poets forged an innovative theatrical language essentially musical and pictorial in nature that appealed to a new generation of directors and designers who rose to dominance in the independent theatre movement.
The seminar will examine the philosophical bases of Symbolism in the theoretical writings of Maeterlinck, Jarry, Strindberg, Yeats, Meyerhold, Briusov, Bely, Sologub, Blok, Chekhov, Stanislavsky, Evreinov, and Miciƒnski, and trace the expansion of the movement—in both theory and practice—throughout Europe, with special attention to Russia, Ireland, and Poland and to the political dimensions of its aesthetic. Plays to be read include Ibsen's Master Builder, Strindberg's To Damascus, Hauptmann's Sunken Bell, Madame Rachilde's Crystal Spider, Chekhov's Seagull, Jarry's Caesar AntiChrist, Yeats's Shadowy Waters, and Mayakovsky's Vladimir Mayakovsky, A Tragedy.
Aspects of the movement to be studied include the avant-garde theatres themselves, their functions and their audiences, the role of journals and publications devoted to Symbolist art, and the growing importance of women writers and artists. The seminar will explore fin-de-siPcle sensibilities, changing conceptions of sexuality, the ideal of the androgyne, apocalyptic anxieties, and millenarium expectations, as reflected in the symbolist world view. Assessment will be made of the contributions of mysticism, gnosticism, Eastern religions, and occult philosophy as well the revival of interest in the Middle Ages. The seminar will finally consider the offshoots of Symbolism in the emerging avant-gardes of Futurism and Expressionism and also take into account its lasting impact outside of Europe and beyond its own time frame.
The seminar will be interdisciplinary in its consideration of the relationships between the new drama circa 1900 and the other arts of music, dance, opera, sculpture, and painting (Redon, Khnopff, Moreau, Kubin, Munch, Vrubel’, Wyspiaƒnski, and Ensor will be viewed). Connections to the popular arts and popular culture, including puppetry, pantomime, the cult of Pierrot, and cabaret, will be made in an attempt to chart the interplay between high and low. As epitaphs for the period, the seminar will conclude with Andreyev’s Requiem and Kraus’s Last Days of Mankind.