Land of hope and glory

Jez Butterworth's tragic landscapes

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8091254
AutoresAnna Harpin (autor correspondente)
Ano2011
Volume31
Fascículo1
Páginas61-73
Data de publicação2011-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoStudies in Theatre and Performance (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1468-2761 • E-ISSN: 2040-0616
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/stap.31.1.61_1
OpenAlexW2006950341
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas13
Referências citadas11

Steve Waters has suggested that climate change can be understood through the optic of classical tragedy. Building on Waters's interpretative frame, then, this article asserts that British society—a protagonist in the environmental drama—has authored its own downfall through destructive acts that were of our own making, though not necessarily our fault. Moreover, as we repeat, with the alacrity of the doomed, our fatal flaw—the catastrophe, it would seem—has become inevitable. Accepting and developing Waters's assertion, this article will consider notions of tragedy, folklore, nation and environment in relation to Jez Butterworth's 2009 play Jerusalem. The fall of great Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron in this piece signals a fall of heritage, of nation, of man. It is presumably, therefore, no accident that great Shakespearean Mark Rylance was cast as this play's bleak hero. Furthermore, if, as Adrian Poole has noted, tragedy stages ‘moments of crisis in a community's understanding of itself’, then Jerusalem

Art · Art history · Environmental ethics · Glory · Performance art · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Philosophy