The Theatre of Imagining

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 1-27

3. The Mirror and the Messenger

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 29-42

4. Corruption or Perfection? The Precariousness of the Early Modern Imagination

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 43-78

5. Macbeth: A Dramaturgy of Deceit

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 79-114

6. From Mirror to Lamp

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 115-137

7. The Disenchantment of the Idealist Imagination

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 139-171

8. A Doll’s House: Performing the Cultural Imaginary

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 173-215

9. The Late Modern Reimagining of Imagination

   • Ulla Kallenbach

   Pages 217-247

10. The Killer: The Interplay of Absence and Presence

    • Ulla Kallenbach

    Pages 249-277

11. Towards a Dramaturgy of Physicalization and Imagination

    • Ulla Kallenbach

    Pages 279-302

12. Back Matter

    Pages 303-324

    PDF

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the fascinating and strikingly diverse history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Key questions that the book explores are: How do spectators engage with the drama in performance, and how does the historical context influence the dramaturgy of imagination? In addition to offering a study of the cultural history and theory of imagination in a European context including its philosophical, physiological, cultural and political implications, the book examines the cultural enactment of imagination in the drama text and offers practical strategies for analyzing the aesthetic practice of imagination in drama texts. It covers the early modern to the late modernist period and includes three in-depth case studies: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c.1606); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879); and Eugène Ionesco’s The Killer (1957).

• Imagination in drama
• Cultural history of imagination
• Cultural theory
• Practice of imagination
• Dramaturgy of imagination
• Plato and theatre
• Aristotle and theatre
• 19th century Scandinavia
• Modern conceptions of imagination
• Imagination of the spectator

“This is an extremely bold attempt to investigate the cultural history of imagination in a European context and to analyse the cultural enactment of imagination in dramatic texts as potential performance. As a concept imagination is more often assumed than actually investigated or historicised, both which  this study very definitely does.” (Christopher Balme, Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Theatre, Chair of Theatre Studies at LMU Munich, Germany)

• University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

  Ulla Kallenbach

Ulla Kallenbach is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Previous publications include the co-edited anthology stage/page/play: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Theatre and Theatricality (2016). She has served as co-editor of Nordic Theatre Studies and worked as a freelance dramaturge.

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