The one vs. the many : minor characters and the space of the protagonist in the novel
09 Feb 2009-
About: The article was published on 2009-02-09. It has received 315 citations till now.
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TL;DR: A sculpture of the bird catcher from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (fig. 1) is located at the entrance of the Theater an der Wien in Vienna as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Perched high above what was once the main entrance to the Theater an der Wien in Vienna is a sculpture of the bird catcher from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (fig. 1). Papageno sits beside his empty birdcage, playing his panpipe. In his company are three children, whose feathered costumes and curly hair resemble Papageno’s own. One of the children holds a panpipe, another a parrot, while the third seems to gesture to visitors of the theater to approach quietly. The sculpture commemorates Emanuel Schikaneder’s most famous role—the role that, arguably, financed his construction of and relocation to the Theater an der Wien. At the same time, however, the sculpture offers a deeper reading of Papageno and his post-Zauberflöte career. With its emphasis on Papageno as a progenitor, this image concretizes the themes of repetition and regeneration that underlie the character and his reception in the wake of Die Zauberflöte. Repetition, as scholars have noted, is ubiquitous in Mozart and Schikaneder’s characterization of Papageno. The unrelenting replay of his signature five-note panpipe scale and the stuttering reiterations of “hm” and “pa” articulate his simple nature. They also make Papageno instantly recognizable, and they provide an impetus for further regeneration. Repetition, in other words, served as a prerequisite for Papageno’s enduring popularity and his eventual promotion to a comic archetype of German opera by the century’s end. Papageno had an extensive afterlife in the many sequels and adaptations that followed Die Zauberflöte, including Christian August Vulpius’s adaptation for the Weimar Theater (1794); Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s fragmentary, unrealized sequel (1794–1800); Les mystères d’Isis (1801) by Etienne Morel de Chédeville and Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith, a version staged at the Paris Opéra; Karl Meisl and Wenzel Müller’s Die travestirte Zauberflöte (1818); and Anton Wilhelm Florentin von Zuccalmaglio’s Der Kederich (1834). In addition to these works, two other revisitations of Die Zauberflöte grant an unusually prominent role to Papageno: Peter Winter and Emanuel Schikaneder’s sequel, Das Labyrinth oder der Kampf mit den Elementen (1798), and an adaptation by the composer Friedrich Himmel
1 citations
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TL;DR: The authors propose a new way of thinking about Dickens's "little" characters in The Old Curiosity Shop and Our Mutual Friend, referencing Melanie Klein's "play-technique" to theorize the anxious aggressive child and posit a complex object relating in which the damage and repair of toys mediated and modulated the unmanageability of infantile emotion.
Abstract: Abstract This essay proposes a new way of thinking about Dickens's “little” characters in The Old Curiosity Shop and Our Mutual Friend, referencing Melanie Klein's “play-technique.” Klein was the first to theorize the anxious aggressive child and to posit a complex object relating in which the damage and repair of toys mediated and modulated the unmanageability of infantile emotion. Dickensian characterization, often criticized as object-like and lacking complex interiority, can be understood to intuit the developmental dynamics that Klein would locate in interactions between the child and the thing. Dickens's increasingly interiorized protagonists are surrounded and mirrored by toylike figures that problematize the thesis of novelistic maturation, proving as essential to the depiction of a complex psychology as internal monologue or achieved Bildung.
1 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: The authors explored the formal work of description in Dickens's novel and proposed the concept of dynamic stasis, a form that occurs not in the plotted activity of the text, but in its descriptions, forcing us to reconsider the formal dynamics of the novel and the stability of the closure derived from heteronormative sociotemporal forms.
Abstract: abstract:This article draws on the concepts of "chrononormativity" and "teleoskepticism" from current debates in queer theory to explore the formal work of description in Dickens's novel (1861–1862). Where formalism and narrative theory have traditionally assumed that narrative action lends dynamism to the novel form, this article draws on Dickens's descriptions of Miss Havisham to propose the concept of dynamic stasis, a form that occurs not in the plotted activity of the text but in its descriptions. Rather than interrupting the narrative action, these descriptions are themselves dynamic forms that force us to reconsider the formal dynamics of the novel and the stability of the closure derived from heteronormative sociotemporal forms, like the marriage plot or the bildungsroman.
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1 citations