Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 43 No. 1, 2017.
Original scientific paper
WHAT DOES THE FOLK DRAMA VALORIZE OR THE REASON WHY IT IS (NOT) POPULAR
Sanja Nikčević
; Odsjek za kazališnu umjetnost Umjetničke akademije u Osijeku
Abstract
Although one of the dominant genres in European theatre in the 18th and 19th centuries, folk drama does not have a proper place in the theory of literature. It is neither fully defined nor positioned in the genre system of that time because con-temporary theory despised it and threw it out of canon. The article starts from the thesis that this genre has been thrown out of canon not because of its inadequate quality or because of the development of drama that made it redundant, but because of extraliterary reasons. Dealing with basic characteristics and conventions of the genre, the article attempts to prove that the reason for the rejection of this genre lies in the worldview change of European society, which also led literary canon to renounce everything that would affirm the values of the previously incumbent Christian worldview, values that the folk drama declares as its fundamental reasons for writing. The article suggests a generic term folk drama as well as re-reading and re-evaluating these works without the aforementioned worldview limitation.
Keywords
folk drama; das Volksspiel/das Volksstück; worldview; literary canon; drama criticism; affirmation of values
Hrčak ID:
181416
URI
Publication date:
8.5.2017.
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