Masked Madness

After committing murder, three siblings decide to hide in the city of Isla Verde. It is known for being an anarcho-communist society that promotes inclusivity, freedom, and peace. Much to their surprise, they learn that Isla Verde contains a bizarre set of rules that everyone must abide by. The most important rule is that everyone must wear a masquerade mask at all times. Those who fail to fit into the city's social standards are killed on the spot. This is a violent, yet whimsical and surreal tale of three young adults who are forced to change themselves to survive in a city where insanity is the norm. This story is not for the faint of heart. Reader discretion is advised.

Profiling 30 mask makers from around the world, this book explores the motivations and challenges of contemporary artists working to bring the traditional methods and conventions of mask making to an evolving global theatre. There are 181 photographs--including two sections of color plates--which illustrate how the mythic iconography of masks is used in the modern fields of dance, mime, theatre and storytelling. Topics include the ways in which mask artists and performers maintain a sense of universality despite varying local customs; the legacies of Italian mask makers Amleto and Donato Sartori and of the California-based Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre; and the ways in which traditional approaches in mask artistry continue to influence commercial mask performance ventures in film, on Broadway, and in touring companies.

How does historical reality interrelate with fiction? And how much are readers themselves involved in the workings of fictional literature? With innovative interpretations of various well-known texts, Nourit Melcer-Padon introduces the use of literary masks and illustrates literature's engagement of its readers' ethical judgement. She promotes a new perception of literary theory and of connections between thinkers such as Iser, Castoriadis, Sartre, Jung and Neumann. The book offers a unique view on the role of the community in post-existentialist modern cultural reality by emphasizing the importance of ritual practices in literature as a cultural manifestation.

"If Bakhtin is right," Wayne C. Booth has said, "a very great deal of what we western critics have spent our time on is mistaken, or trivial, or both." In Literature and Spirit David Patterson proceeds from the premise that Bakhtin is right. Exploring Bakhtin's notions of spirit, responsibility, and dialogue, Patterson takes his reader from the narrow arena of literary criticism to the larger realm of human living and human loving. True to the spirit of Bakhtin, he draws the Russian into a vibrant dialogue with other thinkers, including Foucault, Berdyaev, Gide, Lacan, Levinas, and Heidegger. But he does not stop there. He engages Bakhtin in his own insightful and unique dialogue, meeting the responsibility and taking the risk summoned by dialogue. Literature and Spirit, therefore, is not a typically cool and detached exercise in academic curiosity. Instead, it is a passionate and penetrating endeavor to respond to literature and spirit as the links in life's attachment to life. The author demonstrates that in deciding something about literature, we decide something about the substance and meaning of our lives. Far from being a question of commentary or explication, he argues, our relation to literature is a matter of spiritual life and death. The reader who comes before a literary text encounters the human voice. And Patterson enables his reader to hear that voice in all its spiritual dimensions. Unique in its questions and in its quest, Literature and Spirit addresses an audience that goes beyond the ordinary academic categories. It appeals not only to students of literature, philosophy, and religion, but to anyone who seeks an understanding of spiritual presence and meaning in life. Through his affirmation of what is dear, Patterson responds to the needful question. And in his response he puts the question to his audience: Where are you? Literature and Spirit thus speaks to those who face the task of answering, "Here I am."

“Hello! Hello! Hello! Where are you going? It’s a call, for you all. ‘We are busy to play our roles. Lovely or not, that doesn’t a matter anymore.’ How funny! Really? Who are you then? Ask? ‘Wearing mask, and owner of fake smile.’ It’s the real passage. Not always. Be your realself, Then can be the owner of real happiness. Calmness will help to tear off the mask at last. “ The Mask” itself, the fume of life’s stage. It recalls now- “Never mind. Just make your steps without my artificial tract.” Hope, it will make, for a moment the delightful canvas

Every reader is an actor according to Rosenberg. To prepare the actor-reader for insights, Rosenberg draws on major intepretations of the play worldwide, in theatre and in criticism, wherever possible from the first known performances to the present day. The book is rich and provocative on every question about the play.

This vibrant collection of essays claims that a complex network of texts by critics, biographers and diarists established the credibility and influence of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Throughout the twentieth century, Modernist taste failed to acknowledge the achievement of oppositional groupings such as the Pre-Raphaelites. The essays collected here, however, reveal that the British group anticipated later avant-gardes by using the written word to configure for itself a radical artistic identity. Public and critics alike were scandalized by the radicalism of Pre-Raphaelite painting, its unflinching portrayal of historical figures and of contemporary life, and its irreverent attitude to artistic convention. Pre-Raphaelitism's innovations were not confined to style: new forms of artistic identity and behaviour were explored. As the contributors interrogate the texts through which Pre-Raphaelitism was constructed, they demonstrate that the movement's wide influence as a cultural phenomenon derived from the interplay between exhibited works and critical discourse. Applying a range of sophisticated methodologies from the fields of literary studies, art history, and cultural studies, these interdisciplinary essays uncover the neglected role of texts in the success of the Pre-Raphaelite rebellion and argue in favor of a new centrality for this movement in the history of nineteenth-century European culture.