Kleist's On the Marionette Theatre and the Poetics of the Unrepresentable in Penthesilea

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Abstract

Kleist's essay 'On the Marionette Theatre" makes the point that the mechanical movements of the puppets when in harmony with the puppeteer's manipulation, are more gracious and aesthetic than any living dancer. This is due to the fact that the puppets are a projection of the puppeteer's unconscious. The aesthetics of movement in this essay are encoded in the poetics of Kleist's lyrical drama, Penthesilea, in which the heroine 'flies' around the stage in a movement similar to the puppets, but the movement is an effect of language, which has its origins in the unconscious and the death drive. Using a Classical mythological plot, Kleist transforms myth into mythopoetics to give expression to emotions as the actual substance of 'history'.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication Cossacks in Jamaica, Ukraine at the Antipodes
Subtitle of host publicationEssays In Honor of Marko Pavlyshyn
EditorsAlessandro Achilli, Dmytro Yesypenko, Serhy Yekelchyk
Place of PublicationBoston USA
PublisherAcademic Studies Press
Pages72-87
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781644693025, 9781644693766
ISBN (Print)9781644693018
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • puppets, myth, mythopoesis, unconscious, death drive, Romanticism, history

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