Letizia Fusini
SOAS University of London, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES OF CHINA AND INNER ASIA, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Currently Postdoctoral research associate at SOAS, University of London (since Feb. 2018)
Previously Fixed-Term Lecturer in Global Shakespeare on Film at University of Essex (2019) and Associate Lecturer in Chinese Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London (2016-2018).
My current research project investigates the impact of Western tragedy on the birth of modern Chinese theatre (1900-1949), as well as the relationship between tragedy and modernity in Cao Yu and Federico G. Lorca's tragic trilogies.
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I curate a blog where I publish informative articles on both classical and modern Chinese drama. The blog is divided into 5 sections: books, criticism, history, people, and synopses of plays. Visit peargardenwillowsociety.wordpress.com
Previously Fixed-Term Lecturer in Global Shakespeare on Film at University of Essex (2019) and Associate Lecturer in Chinese Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London (2016-2018).
My current research project investigates the impact of Western tragedy on the birth of modern Chinese theatre (1900-1949), as well as the relationship between tragedy and modernity in Cao Yu and Federico G. Lorca's tragic trilogies.
************************************************
I curate a blog where I publish informative articles on both classical and modern Chinese drama. The blog is divided into 5 sections: books, criticism, history, people, and synopses of plays. Visit peargardenwillowsociety.wordpress.com
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This paper aims to present a new and fresh critical perspective on Gao Xingjian’s (mainly post-exile) dramaturgy of the predicament of modern man through a re-examination of two of its most salient elements: the dramatic technique of shifting pronouns and the performative concept of the “other shore”. By elaborating on Gao’s transhistorical definition of tragedy as the eternal confrontation between the individual and his own Self (“About Escape” 1990), and drawing on selected scholarship on tragedy and the tragic, this paper ultimately characterizes Gao’s plays as “thirdspace tragedies”, owing to the presence—at a subtextual level—of an interstitial psychological field dominated by multiple tensions, lacerations, subjugations and divisions which affect the characters and their relationship to external reality and/or the realm of imagination.
Considering Lao She's call for the emergence of a "Chinese Dante" (1941), it is argued that China might have found its own "Dante" in Gao who seems to have shared the same destiny of the exiled Florentine poet. Although Lao She ascribed to the Buddhist clergy the task of creating a Chinese literature of the soul modeled on the Divine Comedy, it is suggested that Gao might have fulfilled this task without resorting to any religious framework, but to a personal, intense, and profoundly Chinese spirituality.
By illustrating his progressive distancing from Verfremdung in the strictly Brechtian sense, this paper argues that in Gao’s drama V. is employed as a preferred mode of presentation (rather than for its purported effect on the audience) aimed at showcasing the condition of existential Entfremdung (separation, laceration) experienced by the lonely characters portrayed in his plays. In this sense, the relationship between Verfremdung and Entfremdung as respectively a form and a motif of cardinal importance in Gao’s dramaturgy is informed by a complex dialectics aimed at raising awareness of the realities of modern man as a distressed human being, constantly fighting against a threatening Other than seems to be everywhere and can never be fully suppressed.
This paper aims to present a new and fresh critical perspective on Gao Xingjian’s (mainly post-exile) dramaturgy of the predicament of modern man through a re-examination of two of its most salient elements: the dramatic technique of shifting pronouns and the performative concept of the “other shore”. By elaborating on Gao’s transhistorical definition of tragedy as the eternal confrontation between the individual and his own Self (“About Escape” 1990), and drawing on selected scholarship on tragedy and the tragic, this paper ultimately characterizes Gao’s plays as “thirdspace tragedies”, owing to the presence—at a subtextual level—of an interstitial psychological field dominated by multiple tensions, lacerations, subjugations and divisions which affect the characters and their relationship to external reality and/or the realm of imagination.
Considering Lao She's call for the emergence of a "Chinese Dante" (1941), it is argued that China might have found its own "Dante" in Gao who seems to have shared the same destiny of the exiled Florentine poet. Although Lao She ascribed to the Buddhist clergy the task of creating a Chinese literature of the soul modeled on the Divine Comedy, it is suggested that Gao might have fulfilled this task without resorting to any religious framework, but to a personal, intense, and profoundly Chinese spirituality.
By illustrating his progressive distancing from Verfremdung in the strictly Brechtian sense, this paper argues that in Gao’s drama V. is employed as a preferred mode of presentation (rather than for its purported effect on the audience) aimed at showcasing the condition of existential Entfremdung (separation, laceration) experienced by the lonely characters portrayed in his plays. In this sense, the relationship between Verfremdung and Entfremdung as respectively a form and a motif of cardinal importance in Gao’s dramaturgy is informed by a complex dialectics aimed at raising awareness of the realities of modern man as a distressed human being, constantly fighting against a threatening Other than seems to be everywhere and can never be fully suppressed.