The Drama of Ideas Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy

by Puchner, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780199730322
• ISBN10: 0199730326
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Most philosophy makes little mention of the theater except to denounce it as a place of illusion and moral decay. The theater has tended to respond in kind by steering away from philosophy, driven by the notion that theater consists of actions, not ideas. The Drama of Ideas argues that despite this mutual evasion, the histories of philosophy and theater have in fact been crucially intertwined. Appointing Plato as a hinge figure, Puchner traces this alternative tradition as well as recounting the long-standing philosophical register in drama and philosophy's more recent theatrical shift. Moving from a consideration of Plato as a dramatist to those Renaissance playwrights who drew on Plato's chief character, Socrates, Puchner articulates an alternative history of the theater which places philosophy front and center. He believes that modern drama should be understood as Platonic, rather than anti-Aristotelian, as it is often labeled. When Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello, Georg Kaiser and Bertolt Brecht are contextualized in light of this alternative perspective, they emerge as major contributors to a drama of ideas. Philosophy underwent a corresponding theatrical shift in the modern era, most importantly through the work of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus. More recently, Kenneth Burke and Gilles Deleuze have used a theatrical models perspective through which to write the history of philosophy, while contemporary descendants of Plato's dramatic imagination include Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum and Alain Badiou.

Author Biography

Martin Puchner holds the H. Gordon Garbedian Chair in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he also serves as the co-chair of the Theatre Ph.D. program. In addition to serving as the coeditor to The Norton Anthology of Drama, he is the author of Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton UP, 2006) and Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (Johns Hopkins UP, 2002). His essays have appeared in Bookforum, The London Review of Books and n+1.

Table of Contents

The Poetics of the Platonic Dialogue	p. 3
Plato, Dramatist	p. 3
Plato's Genres: Tragedy, Comedy, Satyr Play	p. 9
Plato's Dramaturgy	p. 20
A Brief History of the Socrates Play	p. 37
Socrates on the Stage	p. 40
The Death of Socrates	p. 52
The Comic Stage Philosopher	p. 63
The Drama of Ideas	p. 73
The Modern Socrates Play	p. 75
Oscar Wilde	p. 82
George Bernard Shaw	p. 92
Luigi Pirandello	p. 100
Bertolt Brecht	p. 106
Tom Stoppard	p. 112
Dramatic Philosophy	p. 121
Søren Kierkegaard	p. 125
Friedrich Nietzsche	p. 138
Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus	p. 148
Kenneth Burke	p. 162
Gilles Deleuze	p. 166
The New Platonists	p. 173
Iris Murdoch	p. 174
Martha Nussbaum	p. 180
Alain Badiou	p. 185
Epilogue: Dramatic Platonism	p. 193
Socrates Titles	p. 199
Charting the Socrates Play	p. 209
Notes	p. 211
Bibliography	p. 237
Index	p. 245
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