Dionysus on the Other Shore

Letizia Fusini, Ph.D. (2016), SOAS, University of London, is Postdoctoral Research Associate at SOAS and has taught at Goldsmiths and University of Essex. She has published essays on Chinese theatre and Comparative Literature in CLCWeb, Neohelicon, Modern Drama, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Asian Theatre Journal and edited collections including the Routledge Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature (2018).

Acknowledgements



Introduction: A Dramaturgical System with Tragic Characteristics: Rethinking Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays

 1 Gao Xingjian and the Question of Culture

 2 “A New Form of the Tragic Must and Will Be Born”: Gao Xingjian’s “Tragic Plays of Self”

 3 A Theatre of the Tragic: Methodological Considerations

 4 Dionysus on the Other Shore



1 From Oedipus to Dionysus: the Gaoian Tragic Self from Philosophy to Dramaturgy

 1 Introduction: Tragedy and the Tragic—an Inextricable Dyad

 2 Gao Xingjian, Tragedy, and the Tragic Condition

 3 Modern Man’s Predicament: Subjectivity as Un-safe Haven

 4 The Daimon Within: When Oedipus Is Not Enough

 5 From Philosophy to Dramaturgy: the Tragic Mode

 6 Bonds and Boundaries: the Gaoian Self as a Tragic Field



2 Toward a Theatre of the Tragic: The Bus Stop, The Other Shore, and the Transition from Absurdity to Tragedy

 1 Introduction: Gao Xingjian’s (Tragic) Modernism: From the Homeland to Existence

 2 The Bus Stop: Absurd or Pre-tragic?

 3 Beyond Absurdist Drama: The Tragic Field as a Performative Device

 4 Performing the Tragic Field: The Other Shore

 5 From a Theatre of the Absurd to a Theatre of the Tragic



3 Between Cohesion and Division: the Tragic Field and Mode in Gao Xingjian’s Post-1990 Plays of Self

 1 Introduction: Like “a Rip in the Paper Sky,” a Universe on the Edge of Chaos

 2 Between Life and Death: the Spatialization of the Tragic Field and Sparagmos of the Feminine Self

 3 The Sleepwalker: the Psychologization of the Tragic Field and the Sparagmos of the Masculine Self

 4 Dialogue and Rebuttal: the Gendering of the Tragic Field and the Sparagmos of Language

 5 The Death Collector: Dionysian Frenzy and the Apotheosis of the Tragic Potential

 6 Mysterium Tremendum: Tragic Acting, Katabasis and the Religion of the Self



4 Escape and Modern Tragedy

 1 Introduction: Gao Xingjian, Escape, and Cross-cultural Tragic Modernities

 2 Escape: a Modern Tragedy?

 3 Tragedy and Its Double(s): Reassembling the Fragments of Dionysus



Conclusion: Gao Xingjian’s Theatre of the Tragic as Thirdspace: towards a Transcultural Model?

Bibliography

Index