THE STORIES: SWAN SONG. An actor wakes up with a hangover, locked in the theater after the evening's performance. He is terrified when he thinks a ghost appears, but it is only the theater's prompter. The actor tells him stories of his life and als

Surveying the artistic and cultural scene in the era of Trump In a world where truth is cast in doubt and shame has gone missing, what are artists and critics on the left to do? How to demystify a political order that laughs away its own contradictions? How to mock leaders who thrive on the absurd? And why, in any event, offer more outrage to a media economy that feeds on the same? Such questions are grist to the mill of Hal Foster, who, in What Comes after Farce?, delves into recent developments in art, criticism, and fiction under the current regime of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption. Concerned first with the cultural politics of emergency since 9/11, including the use and abuse of trauma, conspiracy, and kitsch, he moves on to consider the neoliberal makeover of aesthetic forms and art institutions during the same period. A final section surveys signal transformations in art, film, and writing. Among the phenomena explored are machine vision (images produced by machines for other machines without a human interface), operational images (images that do not represent the world so much as intervene in it), and the algorithmic scripting of information that pervades our everyday lives. If all this sounds dire, it is. In many respects we look out on a world that has moved, not only politically but also technologically, beyond our control. Yet Foster also sees possibility in the current debacle: the possibility to pressure the cracks in this order, to turn emergency into change.

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.

Farce has always been relegated to the lowest rung of the ladder of dramatic genres. Distinctions between farce and more literary comic forms remain clouded, even in the light of contemporary efforts to rehabilitate this type of comedy. Is farce really nothing more than slapstick-the "putting out of candles, kicking down of tables, falling over joynt-stools," as Thomas Shadwell characterized it in the seventeenth century? Or was his contemporary, Nahum Tate correct when he declared triumphantly that "there are no rules to be prescribed for that sort of wit, no patterns to copy; and 'tis altogether the creature of imagination"? Davis shows farce to be an essential component in both the comedic and tragic traditions. Farce sets out to explore the territory of what makes farce distinct as a comic genre. Its lowly origins date back to the classic Graeco-Roman theatre; but when formal drama was reborn by the process of elaboration of ritual within the mediaeval Church, the French term "farce" became synonymous with a recognizable style of comic performance. Taking a wide range of farces from the briefest and most basic of fair-ground mountebank performances to fully-fledged five-act structures from the late nineteenth century, the book reveals the patterns of comic plot and counter-plot that are common to all. The result is a novel classification of farce-plots, which serves to clarify the differences between farce and more literary comic forms and to show how quickly farce can shade into other styles of humor. The key is a careful balance between a revolt against order and propriety, and a kind of Realpolitik which ultimately restores the social conventions under attack. A complex array of devices in such things as framing, plot, characterization, timing and acting style maintain the delicate balance. Contemporary examples from the London stage bring the discussion u

Vol. for 1888 includes dramatic directory for Feb.-Dec.; vol. for 1889 includes dramatic directory for Jan.-May.

It may well be the sheer virtuosity of its writing that has deprived English audiences hitherto of an opportunity to appreciate Los cuernos de Don Friolera . This comic masterpiece by Spain's most innovative modern dramatist provides a provocatively sardonic treatment of marital infidelity and honourable revenge.

This collection explores the notion of reframing as a framework for better understanding the multi-agent and multi-level nature of the translation process, generating new conversations in current debates on translational agency, authority, and power. The volume puts forward reframing as an alternative metaphor to traditional conceptualizations and descriptions of translation, which often position the process in such terms as transformation, reproduction, transposition, and transfer. Chapters in the book reflect on the translator figure as a central agent in actively moving a translated text to a new context, and the translation process as shaped by different forces and subjectivities when translational agency comes into play. The book brings together cross-disciplinary perspectives for viewing translation through the lens of agents, drawing on a wide range of examples across geographic settings, historical eras, and language pairs. The volume integrates analyses from the translated texts themselves as well as their paratexts to offer unique insights into the different layers of mediation in translation and the new frame(s) created for those texts. This book will be of interest to scholars in translation studies, comparative studies, reception studies, and cultural studies.