第一讲：English_and_American_Drama_An_Introduction.pptVIP

English and American Drama 英美戏剧欣赏 An Introduction to drama 导论 1. What is drama A drama is a work of literature or a composition which delineates life and human activity by means of presenting various actions of, and dialogues between a group of characters. And it is designed for theatrical presentation. Two manifestations of a play 2. Why do we study drama? We study drama in order to learn what meaning others have made of life, to comprehend what it takes to produce a work of art, and to glean some understanding of ourselves. Drama produces in a separate, aesthetic world, a moment of being for the audience to experience, while maintaining the detachment of a reflective observer. To great playwrights, the theatre is a means of probing honestly and courageously for the meaning of life and mystery of existence All the world’s a stage And all the men and women merely players They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts… William Shakespeare What attracts me to drama is that it is, in the most obvious ways, what all the arts are, upon a last analysis. William Butler Yeats That is why we must have a theatre, for above all, the theatre places man in the centre of the world. we must have a point of adventurous stillness, the quiet eye of the storm, from which to witness the age old revelation of a man challenging God in the working out of his fate. Arthur Miller The origin of western drama 西方戏剧起源 The Western dramatic tradition has its origins in ancient Greece Greek tragedy, originated in the dithyramb at the Dionysia of 534 BC, the lead singer of the dithyramb, a man named Thespis(泰斯庇斯) , added to the chorus an actor with whom he carried on a dialogue. The elements and Structure of Drama 戏剧要素 Aristotle categorized drama into six elements in his “Poetics” in order of importance as he view them Plot Character Thought Diction Mus