Hamlet stands as a high water mark of canonical art, yet it has equally attracted rebels and experimenters, those avant-garde writers, dramatists, performers, and filmmakers who, in their adaptations and appropriations, seek new ways of expressing innovative and challenging thoughts in the hope that they can change perceptions of their own world. One reason for this, as the book argues, is that the source text that is their inspiration was written in the same spirit. Hamlet as a work of art exhibits many aspects of the “vanguard” movements in every society and artistic milieux, an avant-garde vision of struggle against conformity, which retains an edge of provocative novelty.
Bob Odenkirk is a legend in the comedy-writing world, winning Emmys and acclaim for his work on Saturday Night Live, Mr. Show with Bob and David, and many other seminal TV shows. This book, his first, is a spleen-bruisingly funny omnibus that ranges from absurdist monologues (“Martin Luther King, Jr’s Worst Speech Ever”) to intentionally bad theater (“Hitler Dinner Party: A Play”); from avant-garde fiction (“Obituary for the Creator of Madlibs”) to free-verse poetry that's funnier and more powerful than the work of Calvin Trillin, Jewel, and Robert Louis Stevenson combined.
Modernism, Magazines, and the British avant-garde: Reading Rhythm, 1910-1914 (English Monographs)
This book is a re-examination of the fertile years of early modernism immediately preceding the First World War. During this period, how, where, and under whose terms the avant-garde in Britain would be constructed and consumed were very much to play for. It is the first study to look in detail at two little magazines marginalised from many accounts of this competitive process: Rhythm and the Blue Review. By thoroughly examining not only the content but the interrelated networks that defined and surrounded these publications, Faith Binckes aims to provide a fresh and challenging perspective to the on-going reappraisal of modernism.
Moving Forward, Looking Back - The European Avant-garde and the Invention of Film Culture, 1919-1939
This book, the first full critical overview of the film avant-garde, ushers in a new approach—and in the process creates its own subject. While many books have studied particular aspects of the European film avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, Moving Forward, Looking Back provides a much-needed summary of the theory and practice of the movement, while also emphasizing aspects of the period that have been overlooked.
Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950 - A Critical Anthology
This critical anthology of avant-garde drama offers comprehensive coverage of that distinctively twentieth-century tradition. It includes the full texts of sixteen important plays, each preceded by a historical-critical introduction and followed by an essay, often written by the playwright, that elaborates on the dramatic and aesthetic issues raised by the play. Cardullo and Knopf, in making plays and documents of the avant-garde available in one collection for the first time, underscore the place and importance of the movement.
