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Puntila
''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti'' (german: Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti) is an epic comedy by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. It was written in 1940 and first performed in 1948. The story describes the aristocratic land-owner Puntila's relationship to his servant, Matti, as well as his daughter, Eva, whom he wants to marry off to an Attaché. Eva herself loves Matti and so Puntila has to decide whether to marry his daughter to his driver or to an Attaché, while he also deals with a drinking problem. In his essay "Notes on the Folk Play" (written in 1940), Brecht warns that " naturalistic acting is not enough in this case" and recommends an approach to staging that draws on the ''Commedia dell'Arte''. The central relationship between Mr Puntila and Matti—in which Puntila is warm, friendly and loving when drunk, but cold, cynical and penny-pinching when sober—echoes the relationship between the Tramp and the Millionaire in Charlie Chaplin's ''City Lights'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1940 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1940. Events *January – The English literary magazine '' Horizon'' first appears in London, with Cyril Connolly, Peter Watson and Stephen Spender contributing. *February – The Canadian writer Robertson Davies leaves the Old Vic repertory company in the U.K. *March 11 – Ed Ricketts, John Steinbeck and six others leave Monterey for the Gulf of California on a marine invertebrate collecting expedition. *April – Máirtín Ó Cadhain is interned by the Irish government at Curragh Camp, as a member of the Irish Republican Army. *May 14 – The Battle of the Netherlands ends with the surrender of the main Dutch forces to Nazi German invaders. This evening, the gay Dutch Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich takes poison, dying four days later aged 33. * June 5 – The English novelist J. B. Priestley broadcasts his first Sunday evening radio ''Postscript'', "An excursion to hell", on the BBC Home Ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1948 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1948. Events * January 6 – The poet Pablo Neruda speaks out in the Senate of Chile against political repression and is forced into hiding. *January 28 – A debate between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston on the existence of God is broadcast by the BBC. * February 5 – A private assembly of 50 major literary and artistic figures listens to a recording of Antonin Artaud's play ''Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu'' (To Have Done With the Judgment of God), whose broadcast on French radio three days earlier has been prohibited. * February 17–November 24 – Venezuelan novelist Rómulo Gallegos serves as his country's first correctly elected President, until overthrown in a military coup. *March 21 – Halldor Laxness's ''The Atom Station (Atómstöðin)'' sells out all copies on its first day of publication. *May – Bertolt Brecht's ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (1944) is first pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margarete Steffin
Margarete Emilie Charlotte Steffin (21 March 1908 – 4 June 1941) was a German actress and writer, one of Bertold Brecht's closest collaborators, as well as a prolific translator from Russian and Scandinavian languages. Biography Born to a proletarian family, at the age of fourteen she went to work for the phone company but her interest in Social Democratic politics got her fired. She worked in publishing and agitprop theatre, and became secretary of the party's Lehreverband (1930) and worked at the ''Rote Revue''. In 1931, she took a diction class from Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and became his lover. She was introduced to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, playing a maid in ''Die Mutter'' (1932). In 1933, Brecht and Weigel went into exile in Denmark. Though soon replaced as Brecht's lover by Ruth Berlau, Steffin entered an arranged marriage to a Danish citizen to stay as Brecht's secretary and followed the Brechts to Finland and Moscow when war broke out. She died from t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hella Wuolijoki
Hella Wuolijoki (née Ella Marie Murrik; 22 July 1886 – 2 February 1954), also known by the pen name Juhani Tervapää, was an Estonian-born Finnish writer known for her ''Niskavuori'' series.Wuolijoki, Hella. Eesti Entsüklopeedia 10. Estonian Encyclopaedia Publishers, Tallinn, 1998 Early life Wuolijoki was born in the hamlet of Ala in Helme Parish (now in Tõrva Parish), Valga County, Governorate of Livonia. She began her studies in Tartu, before moving to Helsinki in 1904. In 1908, she married Sulo Vuolijoki, a personal friend of Lenin. They divorced in 1923. Later, Wuolijoki began spelling her name with a W. Career Author Wuolijoki wrote several books under the male pseudonym Juhani Tervapää that were characterised by strong female characters. The 1947 film ''The Farmer's Daughter'' was adapted from her 1937 play ''Juurakon Hulda'', which she also wrote as Juhani Tervapää. She collaborated with Bertolt Brecht on the initial version of his ''Mr Puntila and his Man Matti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exile
Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suffer exile, but sometimes social entities like institutions (e.g. the papacy or a government) are forced from their homeland. In Roman law, ''exsilium'' denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as a capital punishment alternative to death. Deportation was forced exile, and entailed the lifelong loss of citizenship and property. Relegation was a milder form of deportation, which preserved the subject's citizenship and property. The term diaspora describes group exile, both voluntary and forced. "Government in exile" describes a government of a country that has relocated and argues its legitimacy from outside that country. Voluntary exile is often depicted as a form of protest by the person who claims it, to avoid persecution and prosecu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcohol (drug)
Alcohol, sometimes referred to by the chemical name ''ethanol'', is a depressant, depressant drug that is the active ingredient in alcoholic drink, drinks such as beer, wine, and distilled spirits (hard liquor). It is one of the oldest and most commonly consumed recreational drugs, causing the characteristic effects of alcohol intoxication ("drunkenness"). Among other effects, alcohol produces happiness and euphoria, anxiolytic, decreased anxiety, increased sociability, sedation, impairment of cognitive, memory, motor control, motor, and sense, sensory function, and generalized depression of central nervous system (CNS) function. Ethanol is only one of several types of Alcohol (chemistry), alcohol, but it is the only type of alcohol that is found in alcoholic beverages or commonly used for recreational purposes; other alcohols such as methanol and isopropyl alcohol are significantly more toxicity, toxic. A mild, brief exposure to isopropanol, being only moderately more toxic tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network. "Class" is a subject of analysis for List of sociologists, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and Social history, social historians. The term has a wide range of sometimes conflicting meanings, and there is no broad consensus on a definition of "class". Some people argue that due to social mobility, class boundaries do not exist. In common parlance, the term "social class" is usually synonymous with "Socioeconomic status, socio-economic class", defined as "people having the same social, economic, cultural, political or educational status", e.g., "the working class"; "an emerging professional class". H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farce
Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense; satire, parody, and mockery of real-life situations, people, events, and interactions; unlikely and humorous instances of miscommunication; ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances. Genre Despite involving absurd situations and characters, the genre generally maintains at least a slight degree of realism and narrative continuity within the context of the irrational or ludicrous situations, often distinguishing it from completely absurdist or fantastical genres. Farces are often episodic or short in duration, often being set in one specific location where all events occur. Farces have historically been performed for the stage and film. Historical context The term ''farce'' is deri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Non-Aristotelian Drama
Non-Aristotelian drama, or the 'epic form' of the drama, is a kind of play whose dramaturgical structure departs from the features of classical tragedy in favour of the features of the epic, as defined in each case by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his ''Poetics'' (c.335 BCE) The German modernist theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht coined the term 'non-Aristotelian drama' to describe the dramaturgical dimensions of his own work, beginning in 1930 with a series of notes and essays entitled "On a non-aristotelian drama".Willett (1964, 46). In them, he identifies his musical ''The Threepenny Opera'' (1928) as an example of "epic form". " Aristotle's definition," Brecht writes, "the difference between the dramatic and epic forms was attributed to their different methods of construction."From an essay by Brecht probably written in 1936; Brecht (1964, 70). Method of construction here refers to the relation the play establishes between its parts and its whole: Brecht also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans called him Bacchus ( or ; grc, Βάκχος ) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''bakkheia''. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His ''thyrsus'', a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In Orphic religion, he wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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