Zhao Benshan's sketch comedies are full of humorous elements.But the studies of the mechanisms causing humor in these Chinese contexts are relatively rare in the pragmatic domain at home.This essay,appealing to se...Zhao Benshan's sketch comedies are full of humorous elements.But the studies of the mechanisms causing humor in these Chinese contexts are relatively rare in the pragmatic domain at home.This essay,appealing to several pragmatic theories—mainly cooperative principle and polite principle,aims to exemplify and explicate the underlying systems that make up the humorous language.展开更多
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson have frequently been paired up for comparison in studies of early modern English drama.Conventional views about Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies evolved and crystallized in the seventee...Shakespeare and Ben Jonson have frequently been paired up for comparison in studies of early modern English drama.Conventional views about Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies evolved and crystallized in the seventeenth,eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.People believed or were led to believe that Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies were in clear opposition:Shakespeare’s comedies were sweet,romantic,amiable,popular and entertaining,whereas Jonson’s were based on an abstract theory of humors,cold,satiric,pedantic,and moralizing.Only in the last century did these oppositions begin to change,but too slowly.This paper calls those binary oppositions into question.It tries to present a more truthful picture of these two playwrights and their comedies through an examination of some of their works.It argues that some of those oppositions are stereotypes and should not be taken seriously by contemporary Shakespearean and Jonsonian scholars.展开更多
While Pinter's earliest plays have been recognized in the modernist history of theatre as comedies of menace and his later plays as political comedies,this article argues that his earliest plays are equally very l...While Pinter's earliest plays have been recognized in the modernist history of theatre as comedies of menace and his later plays as political comedies,this article argues that his earliest plays are equally very liable to be interpreted as political comedies.Regardless of their absurdist dramatization of people's helpless exposure to external,unidentifiable threats,a common post-WWII characteristic feature of human experience,I claim that The Room and The Dumb Waiter(both written 1957,staged 1960),two model examples of Pinter's earliest oeuvres,do not simply follow the aesthetic of absurdist theatre to express human futility.The audience's experience of viewing the theatrical performances of both plays in terms of discursive cyclicality or character normality is subverted into one of changeability,strangeness,and contradiction.To foreground the political implications of such revolutionary theatrical experience,Pinter's plays are examined in the light of his unique use of defamiliarization,relying not on Brecht's traditional techniques of singing,dancing,image-projecting,or captioning,but on a simple,dual technique of image destruction and creation.It consists of divesting characters of their normality and portraying them instead as individuals who identify only with unusual images of place,time,body,and consciousness.Using this special technique of defamiliarization,both plays are examined to reveal Pinter's central political theme of undermining reality for purposes of mental and physical subjections.展开更多
文摘Zhao Benshan's sketch comedies are full of humorous elements.But the studies of the mechanisms causing humor in these Chinese contexts are relatively rare in the pragmatic domain at home.This essay,appealing to several pragmatic theories—mainly cooperative principle and polite principle,aims to exemplify and explicate the underlying systems that make up the humorous language.
文摘Shakespeare and Ben Jonson have frequently been paired up for comparison in studies of early modern English drama.Conventional views about Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies evolved and crystallized in the seventeenth,eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.People believed or were led to believe that Shakespeare’s and Jonson’s comedies were in clear opposition:Shakespeare’s comedies were sweet,romantic,amiable,popular and entertaining,whereas Jonson’s were based on an abstract theory of humors,cold,satiric,pedantic,and moralizing.Only in the last century did these oppositions begin to change,but too slowly.This paper calls those binary oppositions into question.It tries to present a more truthful picture of these two playwrights and their comedies through an examination of some of their works.It argues that some of those oppositions are stereotypes and should not be taken seriously by contemporary Shakespearean and Jonsonian scholars.
基金Open access funding provided by The Science,Technology&Innovation Funding Authority(STDF)in cooperation with The Egyptian Knowledge Bank(EKB)Open access funding provided by Al Azhar University under a Transformative Agreement plus fully OA agreement.
文摘While Pinter's earliest plays have been recognized in the modernist history of theatre as comedies of menace and his later plays as political comedies,this article argues that his earliest plays are equally very liable to be interpreted as political comedies.Regardless of their absurdist dramatization of people's helpless exposure to external,unidentifiable threats,a common post-WWII characteristic feature of human experience,I claim that The Room and The Dumb Waiter(both written 1957,staged 1960),two model examples of Pinter's earliest oeuvres,do not simply follow the aesthetic of absurdist theatre to express human futility.The audience's experience of viewing the theatrical performances of both plays in terms of discursive cyclicality or character normality is subverted into one of changeability,strangeness,and contradiction.To foreground the political implications of such revolutionary theatrical experience,Pinter's plays are examined in the light of his unique use of defamiliarization,relying not on Brecht's traditional techniques of singing,dancing,image-projecting,or captioning,but on a simple,dual technique of image destruction and creation.It consists of divesting characters of their normality and portraying them instead as individuals who identify only with unusual images of place,time,body,and consciousness.Using this special technique of defamiliarization,both plays are examined to reveal Pinter's central political theme of undermining reality for purposes of mental and physical subjections.
