Slavic 476 (crosslisted with Department of Theatre and Drama)

Course Description:

Textbooks:

Course Outline:

1. What (if any) are the affinities among Slavic plays?
2. How are the plays affected by political and social realities? How did Czech and Polish playwrights respond to a prolonged period of foreign occupation, of geographical and political non-existence, of being a nation without a state?
3. How do the dramatic texts inscribe a theatrical performance? (Here, especially helpful are theoretical studies by the Prague School and by Polish scholars such as Dobrochna Ratajczak.)
4. What is the plays' relationship to the past? (Here the course will draw on a concept of parody understood not as mockery of the model text, but as a creative dialogue between past and present - particularly on Michal Glowinski's concept of parodia konstruktywna, which preceded Linda Hutcheon's work on parody by a decade.)

Course Requirements:

1. attendance and class participation (i.e., completing reading assignments on time and defending your position papers).
2. a detailed journal of your responses to readings and class discussions. The journal should also include a final statement - a summary of your responses to the questions and issues raised in the class.
3. six position papers. Each paper will be approximately two pages long (typed and double-spaced) and will use one or more literary works to "argue a case" or to discuss an idea. Late papers will be accepted only in the case of illness.
4. a research paper on any relevant topic discussed in advance with the instructor. A paper should not exceed 20 pages in length.

   An acceptable research paper develops a logical and systematic approach to a problem or problems in a particular text or a group of texts, with an introduction clearly stating the problem(s) to be investigated, an investigation and an argument, and a conclusion. The paper shows an understanding of the importance of previous scholarship on this or related issues, but it should emphasize the student's own ideas. Students who are proficient in one or more Slavic languages should demonstrate that they understand the text(s) in the original and are sensitive to nuances of style, genre, or period.

Reading Assignments:

1. Contexts: Alfred Jarry, King Ubu
   Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
   Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Endgame
   Eugene Ionesco, The Lesson
2. Critical and theoretical approaches:
   Adam Mickiewicz, "Lesson XVI"
   Konstanty Puzyna, "Grotowski and Polish Romantic Tradition"
   Jan Blonski, "Signs, Theatre, Holiness"
   Jerzy Grotowski, "The Theatre's New Testament" (in Dukore)
   Jerzy Grotowski, "Tu es le fils de quelqu'un" [You are Someone's Son], The Drama Review, 31 (Fall 1987), 30-41.
   Tymon Terlecki, "Polish Historical Antecedents of Surrealism in Drama"
   Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), "On a New Type of Play" (in Dukore)
   Michael Glowinski, "Parodia konstruktywna (O Pornografii Gombrowicza)," in Gry powiesciowe: Szkice z teorii i historii form narracyjnych, 279-303. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973. (in Polish)
   Daniel Gerould, "Laocoon at the Frontier, or The Limit of Limits," Modern Drama, 29 (March 1986), 23-40.
   Iurii Lotman, "Semiotika stseny" (in Russian)
   Jiri Veltrusky's and Jan Mukarovsky's articles in Ladislav Matejka (ed.), Sound, Sign, and Meaning: Semiotics of Art
   Keir Elam, "Language in the Theater," Sub-stance, nos. 18/19 (1977), 139-61.
   Dobrochna Ratajczak, "Sluga dwoch panow: dwoisty zywot dramatu," Teksty Drugie, nos. 5/6 (1990), 80-92. (in Polish)
3. Plays to be discussed in class:
   Nikolai Gogol, The Inspector General
   Anton Checkhov, The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard
   Aleksandr Blok, The Puppet Show
   Adam Mickiewicz, The Forefathers' Eve, Parts II and III
   Stanislaw Wyspianski, The Wedding
   Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), The Madman and the Nun and/or The Crazy Locomotive
   Witold Gombrowicz, The Marriage
   Tadeusz Rozewicz, The Card Index, White Marriage
   Slawomir Mrozek, Alpha (or Zbigniew Herbert, The Philosophers' Den)
   Vaclav Havel, The Memorandum, Temptation
   Pavel Kohout, The Poor Murderer
   

Halina Filipowicz is an Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a recent recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship for Independent Research