Love in Contemporary British Drama: Traditions and Transformations of a Cultural Emotion

by Korbinian Stöckl

Overview

Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. Love in Contemporary British Drama reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades.
Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love’s compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present.
Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110714647
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	01/18/2021
Series:	Contemporary Drama in English Studies , #31
Pages:	303
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Korbinian Stöckl, Augsburg University, Germany.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

1 Introduction 1

Part I The Making of Romantic/Erotic Love: Traditions and Transformations

2 Philosophy of Love: Selections 17

2.1 Love as Compensation 18

2.1.1 Plato's Eros 22

2.1.2 Plato's Romantic Legacy 31

2.1.3 Nostalgic Love: Psychoanalysis and the Desire of the Displaced Self 36

2.2 The Precariousness of Love 46

2.2.1 The Unwanted Guest: Alcibiades and the Desire of the Other 47

2.2.2 The Endangered Self: Love's Precariousness in Modern Philosophy 54

3 Romantic Love in Sociology 65

3.1 Modern Functions of Romantic Love: A Very Brief History 66

3.2 (Post-) Modern Attitudes to Love 72

3.2.1 Love and the Culture of Capitalism 72

3.2.2 The Problem of Authenticity: Idealist and Realist Narratives 74

3.2.3 Individualism and Romantic Rationality 76

3.2.4 Postmodern Precariousness of Love: Choice, Irony, Recognition 80

Part II Analysis: Love in Contemporary British Drama

4 "Why isn't love enough?" Commitment in Patrick Marber's Closer 93

4.1 Style and Genre: A Modern Comedy of Manners? 93

4.2 Synopsis 95

4.3 Closer in Context: The Crisis of Love at the Turn of the Millennium 97

4.3.1 Isolation, Egoism, Self-realisation 98

4.3.2 Postmodern Incredulity towards Love 103

4.4 Timeless Issues: Compensation and Precariousness 116

4.5 Conclusion 122

5 "if you're not with me I feel less like a person": Sex, Drugs, and the Myth of Self-Sufficiency in Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking 124

5.1 Synopsis 125

5.2 "Why are there so many sad people in this world?" The Play's Society 127

5.3 Addicted to Love 130

5.4 Gary's Desire 135

5.5 Conclusion 141

6 Autopsies of Love: Sarah Kane's Erotic Plays 142

6.1 The Love Experience 142

6.2 The Aesthetics of Kane's Dramatic Plays 145

6.3 "A spear in my side, burning": Precarious Desire in Phaedra's Love 154

6.3.1 "No one burns me": Hippolytus' Refusal of Love 155

6.3.2 "Don't imagine you can cure him": The Need for Compensation 158

6.3.3 "If there could have been more moments like this": The Joy of Death 160

6.4 Cleansed: Fragments from the Laboratory of Love 164

6.4.1 A Panopticon of Love 167

6.4.2 Heaven or Hell: Cleansed's Ambivalent Eschatology of Love 170

6.5 Conclusion 180

7 "Not saying I don't want things though": Emotional and Material Desires in Dennis Kelly's Love and Money 183

7.1 Synopsis 184

7.2 Everybody Needs Somebody 189

7.3 I Would Do Anything for Love … But I Won't Do That 192

7.4 All You Need Is Love 196

7.5 Conclusion 201

8 "Love at first sight and the lost city of Atlantis": Penelope Skinner's Eigengrau, Or 'A Fairy Tale of Blind Love' 203

5.1 Synopsis 204

8.1 Urban Loneliness and the Desire for Meaning 212

8.2 "I don't want you to need me": Love's Precariousness and the Desire for Control 214

8.3 Conclusion 220

9 "We don't need ties": Rebellious Love in Mike Bartlett's Love, Love, Love 222

9.1 Synopsis 222

9.2 Act One: Breaking Free 228

9.3 Act Two: Trapped 231

9.4 Act Three: The Lost Generation 237

9.5 Conclusion 241

10 "This poetical… shit": Coming to Terms with Love in debbie tucker green's a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun) 243

10.1 Synopsis 244

10.2 'Understanding' and 'Devotion' 251

10.2.1 Love You More Than I Can Say: Epistemotogical and Terminological Limits of Understanding 252

10.2.2 Devotion: I Want You to Want Me 260

10.3 Conclusion 265

11 Coda 267

Works Cited 274

Index of subjects 286

Index of authors 293