Dissertation Abstract
A Semiotic Study Of The
"New" Theatre In
From Alfred Jarry To Antonin Artaud (1896-1938)
by
Clare Jackson Tufts
Degree: PH.D.
Year: 1982
Pages: 00199
Institution: THE
Source: DAI, 43, no. 08A, (1982): 2693
The plays under consideration in this dissertation
are Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, Guillaume
Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tiresias,
Tristan Tzara's La Premiere adventure
celeste de M. Antipyrine, Georges-Ribemont-Dessaignes' Le Serin muet, and Andre Breton's and Philippe Soupault's S'il vous pla(')it. Although these
authors have long been called precursors of the playwrights of the post-1950
"new" French theatre, their influence has never been thoroughly
analyzed because their works have been approached only from the historical
perspective.
This
study attempts to determine the exact nature of that influence through analysis
of the various sign systems present in the dramatic text and the dramatic
performance (speech, tone of voice, facial expression, gesture, movement,
make-up, hair style, costume, properties, decor, lighting, music, and sound
effects), and their interaction. In our examination of the signs' functions,
which elucidates the goals of the authors, we use the basic terminology of the
American semiotician Charles S. Peirce: icon, index, and symbol. We consider
the referential function of each sign, or what it denotes, and its figurative
function, or its possible connotations. The performance in question is the
first performance of each play under the direction of the author, and the
"recreation" of those performances is based on a variety of documents
including contemporary press reviews, programs, photographs, letters,
manifestoes, and general statements of principle made by the authors.
Chapter
I contains the analysis of Ubu Roi
(1896); Les Mamelles de Tiresias
(1917) is the subject of Chapter II; and the last three plays, all presented
during a dadaist soiree in 1920, are studied in Chapter III. In conclusion we
consider the problem of interpretation in this theatre and the insights Antonin
Artaud had into this problem. The authors succeeded in provoking their
audiences, but their works failed momentarily to bring about significant modifications
of the conventions of the genre because of those audiences' inability to decode
the dramatic experience.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: LITERATURE, ROMANCE
Accession
No: AAG8229426
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations