| This dissertation argues that theatre theory and practice should be recognized by the academic community as important forms of literary theory and criticism that expand the scope of what literary theory and criticism are capable of doing. The argument comprises three parts. First, the written literary theory of theatre theorists is worthy of inclusion in the canon of literary theory. Second, the canon of literary criticism should be expanded to include theatrical productions as texts of literary criticism. Finally, I call for a new school of literary theory and criticism based on the inclusion of theatre theory and practice into the canon of literary theory and criticism.;To support my argument, I examine the work of four of the twentieth-century's most famous and influential theatre theorists in relation to four schools of literary theory before proposing a body-centered theory of theatre-based criticism. First, I examine Constantin Stanislavski's "system" as a cybernetic form of reader-response theory. Next, I discuss Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre theory as Marxist literary theory, emphasizing Brecht's intertextual dialectics as a theory of cultural and literary criticism. In discussing the third theatre theorist, the dissertation takes a slightly different approach and examines how Antonin Artaud's and Jacques Derrida's liberational impulses lead the two men to vastly different (one might even say diametrically-opposed) theories of language---Derrida to a politically progressive theory of language and Artaud to a culturally reactionary theory of language. Next, I discuss Jerzy Grotowski's Theatre of Productions as a form of archetypal theory, arguing that traditional archetypal theory fails because it declines to live up to its theoretical mandate, while Grotowskian archetypal theory fails because it cannot live up to its theoretical mandate. Finally, I propose a body-centered theory of theatre-based literary criticism I call sociosomatic criticism, which posits the actor's body, as well as the mise en scene , as a critical text. |
