The making of theatrical groupings: A cognitive perspective
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Yael Zarhy-Levo,
Yael Zarhy-Levo is a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University 〈lyaell@post.tau.ac.il〉. Her research interests include theatre history and historiography, dynamics of criticism, and modern British theatre. Her publications include
The theatrical critic as cultural agent: Constructing Pinter, Orton and Stoppard as absurdist playwrights (2001);The making of theatrical reputations: Studies from the modern London theatre (2008); “The making of artistic reputation: Dennis Potter, television dramatist” (2009); and “Looking back at the British New Wave” (2010).
and
Yeshayahu Shen,
Yeshayahu Shen is a professor at Tel Aviv University 〈yshen@post.tau.ac.il〉. His research interests include story grammars, discourse comprehension, figurative language comprehension, and cognitive poetics. His publications include “Cognitive constraints on poetic figures” (1997); “Metaphorical (in)coherence in discourse” (with N. Balaban, 1999); “Conventional language: How metaphorical is it?” (with B. Keysar et al., 2000); and “Cognition and poetic figures” (2008).
Abstract
The prototype theory of genres (e.g., Sinding 2002) posits that a genre can be regarded as a cognitive category, conforming to principles of human categorization. In the present article we extend this cognitive view of genres by addressing a relatively under-researched issue: the initial process of genre formation, or in other words, the birth of a genre. In particular, we examine two “formative texts” — the studies by Martin Esslin and Aleks Sierz. In both studies the authors constructed a theatrical genre, introducing the “Theatre of the Absurd” and “In-Yer-Face Theatre,” respectively. Our major question is: to what extent did cognitive principles of categorization play a role in the formation of the genres in question, as manifested in these formative texts?
We focus on the cognitive principles underlying the major critical strategies employed in each of these two studies in the establishment of the category; and contend that these critical strategies adhere to the three fundamental categorization principles — the basic level, the prototype structure, and “category as a theory.”
About the authors
Yael Zarhy-Levo is a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University 〈lyaell@post.tau.ac.il〉. Her research interests include theatre history and historiography, dynamics of criticism, and modern British theatre. Her publications include The theatrical critic as cultural agent: Constructing Pinter, Orton and Stoppard as absurdist playwrights (2001); The making of theatrical reputations: Studies from the modern London theatre (2008); “The making of artistic reputation: Dennis Potter, television dramatist” (2009); and “Looking back at the British New Wave” (2010).
Yeshayahu Shen is a professor at Tel Aviv University 〈yshen@post.tau.ac.il〉. His research interests include story grammars, discourse comprehension, figurative language comprehension, and cognitive poetics. His publications include “Cognitive constraints on poetic figures” (1997); “Metaphorical (in)coherence in discourse” (with N. Balaban, 1999); “Conventional language: How metaphorical is it?” (with B. Keysar et al., 2000); and “Cognition and poetic figures” (2008).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Idealizing the life-world in the age of discovery
- Peirce's ten trichotomies: Metaphor, hypothesis, and decision
- A sociosemiotic approach to fundamental rights in China
- A comparative analysis of print advertising applying the two main plastic semiotics schools: Barthes' and Greimas'
- A note regarding unspeakable words
- The gate of the gateway: A hypermodal approach to university homepages
- Nāṭya, rasa, and abhinaya as semiotic principles in Classical Indian dance
- The social semiotic construction of chemical periodicity: A multimodal view
- The semiotic construction of worldview in film: Multimodal variations in Le Samourai, The Killer, and Ghost Dog
- What is the proper characterization of the alphabet? VI: Three-finger exercises
- Dynamic modeling of visual texts: A relational model
- Touch, vision, and diagrammatical reasoning
- The making of theatrical groupings: A cognitive perspective
- Encyclopedia of semiotics
