front cover of The Director's Prism
The Director's Prism
E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde
Dassia N. Posner
Northwestern University Press, 2016
Finalist, 2017 Theatre Library Association George Freedley Memorial Award
Shortlist, 2019 Prague Quadrennial Best Scenography and Design Publication Award


The Director's Prism investigates how and why three of Russia's most innovative directors— Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein—used the fantastical tales of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann to reinvent the rules of theatrical practice. Because the rise of the director and the Russian cult of Hoffmann closely coincided, Posner argues, many characteristics we associate with avant-garde theater—subjective perspective, breaking through the fourth wall, activating the spectator as a co-creator—become uniquely legible in the context of this engagement. Posner examines the artistic poetics of Meyerhold's grotesque, Tairov's mime-drama, and Eisenstein's theatrical attraction through production analyses, based on extensive archival research, that challenge the notion of theater as a mirror to life, instead viewing the director as a prism through whom life is refracted. A resource for scholars and practitioners alike, this groundbreaking study provides a fresh, provocative perspective on experimental theater, intercultural borrowings, and the nature of the creative process.
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Shikitei Sanba and the Comic Tradition in Edo Fiction
Robert W. Leutner
Harvard University Press, 1985

The last decades of the eighteenth century gave rise to an explosion of literary activity in Edo (now Tokyo) that lasted until the mid-nineteenth century, with an army of writers producing prodigious quantities of fiction. This study traces the life and literary career of Shikitei Sanba (1776-1822), a writer in the mainstream of that generation, the author of more than a hundred works of fiction, many in the comic vein.

This book-length critical treatment of a major writer of gesaku (playful compositions) is a welcome breakthrough, since Sanba's life, his era of literary activity, and the popular genres in which he worked have received scant treatment in English. Leutner describes Sanba as a representative writer within a literary scene shifting from amateur to professional and becoming increasingly commercial.

The text is enhanced by Leutner's translations of excerpts from Sanba's various writings. The Appendix encompasses two long passages in original translation, fully annotated, of Ukiyoburo, "The Bathhouse of the Floating World," one of Sanba's best-known works. In "The Men's Bath" and "The Women's Bath" readers will encounter an array of Edo types. Their informal conversations convey the quality of humor, the sociological characteristics, and much of the flavor of life in Sanba's Edo.

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front cover of Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann
Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann
E. T. A. Hoffmann
University of Chicago Press, 1972
Ranging from macabre fantasies to fairy tales and tales of crime, these stories from the author of The Nutcracker create a rich fictional world. Hoffman paints a complex vision of humanity, where people struggle to establish identities in a hostile, absurd world.

"The editors have made an excellent selection, and the result is a book of great distinction."—Denis Donoghue, New York Review of Books

"The translators have proved fully equal to all the challenges of Hoffmann's romantic irony and his richly allusive prose, giving us an accurate and idiomatic rendering that also retains much of the original flavor."—Harry Zohn, Saturday Review
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