Poetic rituality in theater and literature

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Toward the end of the twentieth century, in art as well as ritual studies, cultural turns contributed to elaborating a broad définition of ritual and rituality. Rituality is now generally regarded as one of the master keys to understanding not only cultures in general but also arts in particular. Po- etic rituality sheds light on the liminal characteristics of the art form and references to ritual practices, ritual forms and structures that are set in motion in a way that allows spécial aesthetic characteristics and seman- tic aspects to arise. The contributors to the volume - theater and literary studies scholars as well as students from Yale, Bielefeld, Kâroli University, and the Grotowski Institute - had the opportunity to share their related works in the course of several recent international academic events. Since our team also included dramatists, dramaturgy, and directors of theater, our workshops offered frames for sharing insights into artistic lab- oratories, especially in the barrack-dramaturgy of Andràs Visky and the work led by Jaroslaw Fret at the Grotowski Theater. Complementing the many different approaches to poetic rituality, ail of the workshop presentations and studies brought together in the present volume continue to demonstrate how fundamentally rituality can contribute to the formal, semantic, pragmatic, and structural unfolding of literary and theatrical art works. Besides continuous theoretical reflections, a vast array of examples is given, ranging from Greek, Japanese, English, and Hungarian to German, Russian, French, and Sdmi drama, performance, and theater productions, as the studies in the present volume also illustrate.