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ISBN: 978 0 230 60289 2
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288
List price(s): 42.50 GBP 79.95 USD
Publication date: 12 June 2008
A collection of essays that both explores the tradition of revenge drama in Japan. This book compares that tradition with the revenge tradition in European Renaissance drama.
The volume is unique in that, although revenge is a major theme in the theatres of Asia and Europe, no volume has ever compared the two traditions. Nor has there been an in-depth exploration in English of Japanese revenge traditions in the modern theatre.The list of contributors is international and cross-disciplinary and all offer original research as pioneers in their respective fields. The reviewer comments, 'every contributor to this volume is recognized as an outstanding scholar in her/his field'.This book includes cross-disciplinary research of interest to scholars, students and practitioners of Theatre, Drama, English, History, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Women's Studies, Film Studies, and Philosophy.This book is a collection of essays that both explores the tradition of revenge drama in Japan and compares that tradition with the revenge tradition in European Renaissance drama.
Thinking Upon Revenge: An Introduction; K.J.Wetmore; PART I: REVENGE CONTEXTS AND COMPARISONS; Closed and Open Societies: The Revenge Dramas of Japan, Spain and England; L.Pronko; Unsexed and Disembodied: Female Avengers in Japan and England; C.F.Sorgenfrei; 'Avenge Me!' Ghosts in English Renaissance and Kabuki Revenge Dramas; K.J.Wetmore; Classical Adultery/Revenge Drama from Stage to Screen: Imai Tadashi's Night Drum; K.McDonald; Kabuki Parodies of Blood Revenge; L.Kominz; Censoring Vengeance: Revenge Dramas and Tragedies During the Allied Occupation of Japan; D.Jortner; Performing Bushido: Revenge and American Kabuki Replications; A.D.Anderson; PART II: CHUSHINGURA: EAST AND WEST; The Horizontal Chushingura: Western Translations and Adaptations Prior to World War II; A.M.Cohen; Chushingura in the 1980s: Rethinking the Story of the 47 Ronin; H.D.Smith II; One Legacy of Madame Butterfly: Chushingura as a Contemporary Opera; J.T.Rimer; Gender Construction and Chushingura as a Japanese National Legend; J.Saeki; The Play's the Thing: Cross-cultural Adaptation of Revenge Plays through Traditional Drama; K.J.Wetmore.
KEVIN J. WETMORE, Jr. is a professor of Theatre Studies at Loyola Marymount University, USA.