The Play Of The Self

This interdisciplinary study explores the relationship between play and mimesis in the constitution and dissolution of the individual and social self. The volume is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on the mimetic-ludic foundations of mind, memory, and desire; the second on the social and psychological self as agent of playful performance and product of cultural codes; and the third on the interplay of psyche, image, and power in literary and artistic representations of the self. The subjects of the individual studies vary widely, from the interrelation of power and play in Orlando Furioso to the ludic foundations of cognition to the concept of the self in Foucault and Deleuze.

"The book covers extraordinary ground in literature, the arts, philosophy, and even the social sciences. The concern about the issue of self and the representations of self brings far-reaching ideas together in the most surprising and mutually illuminating ways. Poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques of self-identity have made the topic controversial and broadly relevant to all the fields represented. Extreme statements abound on both sides of the argument, and this book succeeds in marshaling subtle and nuanced thought on the topic. Each essay is neatly self-contained, remarkably relevant to other essays in the collection, and a model of illuminating argument, careful scholarship, and attractive writing." -- Book cover.

Growing out of a series of articles written over a 15 year period, and illustrated with over 100 photos, this volume offers a narrowed focus examination of various performing traditions that rely on the expressive power and imagination of masks. It explores the redefinition of self into "other," when the mask is worn, and examines actors and their performances in Papua New Guinea, Orissa, India, and Bali.

A notable contribution to our understanding of ourselves. This book explores the realm of human behavior in social situations and the way that we appear to others. Dr. Goffman uses the metaphor of theatrical performance as a framework. Each person in everyday social intercourse presents himself and his activity to others, attempts to guide and cotnrol the impressions they form of him, and employs certain techniques in order to sustain his performance, just as an actor presents a character to an audience. The discussions of these social techniques offered here are based upon detailed research and observation of social customs in many regions.

The thirty chapters of this innovative international study are all devoted to the topic of the play within the play. The authors explore the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting - from the baroque idea of a theatrum mundi onward to contemporary examples of postmodern self-referential dramaturgy - but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications, e.g. in narrative fiction, musical theatre and film. The authors, internationally recognized specialists in their respective fields, draw on recent debates in such areas as postcolonial studies, game and systems theories, media and performance studies, to analyze the specific qualities and characteristics of the play within the play: as ultimate affirmation of the 'self' (the 'Hamlet paradigm'), as a self-reflective agency of meta-theatrical discourse, and as a vehicle of intermedial and intercultural transformation. The challenging study, with its underlying premise of play as a key feature of cultural anthropology and human creativity, breaks new ground by placing the play within the play at the centre of a number of intersecting scholarly discourses on areas of topical concern to scholars in the humanities.

Based on the exceptional scholarship of the distinguished sociologist Thomas S. Henricks, this penetrating, accessible, and wide-ranging collection represents the culmination of his efforts-through the American Journal of Play in particular-to elucidate what play is and what it means to human beings.

Self Active Play shares with readers the principles and experiences of 30+ years of exploring play through the Institute for Self Active Education and with hundreds of children and educators. Self Active Play delivers: insights you can use in opening up environments for play; advice for stocking play spaces with creative open-ended materials; and on the important job of nurturing teachers and parents in the art of play. This book proves that play is key to optimal development in early childhood and significant to all of us no matter what age.

Effective clinical practice requires a thorough understanding of how turning points surface in the play therapy process. These moments can indicate a change in a child's thought or behaviour. The play therapist is the facilitator of these moments and this book will provide guidance on how they can promote these moments. This edited collection demonstrates successful implementation of the author's proven Play Therapy Dimensions Model. Each chapter uses this framework, as well as other theories, to discuss the markers that can reflect shifts and growth in a child's development. Full of applied guidance, this book will prove to be invaluable for practitioners, instructors and students.

In this closely argued book Dr Ball is concerned to analyse the imaginative process of self-understanding which emerged as a characteristic feature of English Romantic poetry and, acquiring fresh creative force in the Victorian period, has been transmitted to our own times as a determining principle of the contemporary imagination. Dr Ball relates her discussion to the distinction between the poet speaking directly in his own voice and the impulse to dramatised utterance – the two modes of poetic expression conveniently summed up in Keats's contrasting terms 'egotistical sublime' and 'chameleon'. She shows how these 'polar' tendencies co-exist fruitfully in the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats and from this standpoint supplies a coherent appreciation of the little-regarded plays written by these poets. Turning to Victorian critics and poets Dr Ball considers how the Romantic inheritance fared at their hands. She sees in the poets, notably Tennyson, Arnold, Browning, and Hopkins, a vital link by which the Romantic commitment to the agency of self-consciousness has been carried forward to the twentieth century and concludes with a brief sketch of the creative role of self-exploration in T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats.