Period 1: Please use your time in the lab today to work on your play projects. Turn in any homework you may need to turn in (including the viewing notes for last class' Hedda Gabler). See previous posts for details.
Period 2: Pickup The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. Keep your Miss Julie scripts.
Discussion of Salome, Miss Julie, (and Miss Julie with Helen Mirren as Miss Julie, clip from 1972 production) and Miss Julie with Colin Farrell (trailer); and a production of The Boor.
Naturalism (1865-1900) attempts to go further from realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment affects human behavior. Plots often revolve around social problems, characters are often drawn from lower classes and the poor, perhaps in an attempt to explain their behavior. We will see these themes in Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Salome, and to some extent in Chekhov.
Begin reading Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.
HOMEWORK: Read Strindberg's introduction to Miss Julie. Examine how elements of Naturalism are present in his script. Consider what we, as contemporary playwrights, might be able to learn from this. Explain what you might have learned from reading Miss Julie and Strindberg's introduction. Work on your play projects. Bring your Seagull scripts back with you to our next class.
Period 2: Pickup The Seagull by Anton Chekhov. Keep your Miss Julie scripts.
Discussion of Salome, Miss Julie, (and Miss Julie with Helen Mirren as Miss Julie, clip from 1972 production) and Miss Julie with Colin Farrell (trailer); and a production of The Boor.
- Questions about the plays?
- Compare/contrast the stories/characters.
- Each one-act play deals with power, men/women, and class distinctions. How do these themes present themselves in the 3 plays?
To understand Naturalism, it is important to know that it was a reaction against the two literary periods that came before it. These are:
Romanticism (1798-1832/1850): Reaction against reason and the Neoclassical/Enlightenment periods, it celebrated nature, spontaneity, imagination, and subjectivity. The ode comes back into favor. As well as women writers who begin to consider equal rights and education. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, later the Bronte sisters. various poets: Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats; Gothic literature and the supernatural (Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, The Brontes), etc.
Realism (1830-1900): The period of literature that attempts to portray life honestly, without sensationalism, exaggeration, or melodrama. Characters and plots are taken largely from middle class for middle class readers. Ordinary contemporary life. Dickens is probably the best example of this, although he did tend to be a bit Romantic too (Christmas Carol, for example...)
Naturalism (1865-1900) attempts to go further from realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment affects human behavior. Plots often revolve around social problems, characters are often drawn from lower classes and the poor, perhaps in an attempt to explain their behavior. We will see these themes in Miss Julie, Hedda Gabler, Salome, and to some extent in Chekhov.
Begin reading Anton Chekhov's The Seagull.
HOMEWORK: Read Strindberg's introduction to Miss Julie. Examine how elements of Naturalism are present in his script. Consider what we, as contemporary playwrights, might be able to learn from this. Explain what you might have learned from reading Miss Julie and Strindberg's introduction. Work on your play projects. Bring your Seagull scripts back with you to our next class.
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