Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory Paperback - 2010

As an integral part of his work as a political playwright, Bertolt Brecht concerned himself extensively with the theory of drama. He was convinced that the Aristotelian ideal of bringing the audience to catharsis through identification with a hero and the resultant experience of terror and pity worked against his goal of creating a Marxist theater of critical distance and political insight. He did not want his audiences to indulge in emotional escapism, but required them to respond with a combination of skeptical distance and intellectual curiosity to what they were being shown, and it was in pursuit of this goal that his main theoretical thrusts - his famous "Verfremdungseffekte" (de-familiarization devices) and epic theater, among others -- were conceived. Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory is the first detailed study in English of Brecht's writings on the theater to take into account the substantial new material first made available in the recent German edition of his collected works. It offers in-depth analyses of Brecht's canonical essays on the theater, ranging from his notes of 1930 on the innovative opera Mahagonny to the unfinished Messingkauf project of the late 1940s and early GDR years. Close readings of the individual essays are supplemented by surveys of the connotations and changing status within Brecht's dramaturgical oeuvre of key theoretical terms, including epic and anti-Aristotelian theater, de-familiarization, historicization, and dialectical theater. Brecht's distinct contribution to the theorizing of acting and audience response is also examined in detail, with each theoretical essay and concept being placed within the context of the aesthetic debates of the time, subjected to a critical assessment, and considered in light of subsequent scholarly thinking. In many cases, the playwright's theoretical discourse is shown to employ methods of "epic" presentation and techniques of de-familiarization that are corollaries of the dramatic techniques for which his plays are justly famous. John J. White is Emeritus Professor of German and Comparative Literature at King's College London. He is the author of a monograph on Brecht's Leben des Galilei, as well as books on the modern novel and literary Futurism.