A Continuing Checklist of Shaviana

Abstract

we learn that “this thesis focuses on female comic characters in modern drama as they relate to the emergence of first-wave feminism in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Britain. More specifically, it examines the position of the figure of the new woman within the conventions of traditional comedy. Analyzing specific character traits and elements of dramatic composition that allow this figure to exist within the comic form, I consider how select playwrights deploy comedy in order to shape the reception of the new woman. Using three case studies that include parodies of Henrik Ibsen’s plays, suffrage comedy, and the work of George Bernard Shaw, I explore how comedy was used in different contexts to both empower and diminish the complexity of the new woman. I conclude that the comic new woman was defined by her reassessment and re-inscription on the modern stage as well as the social, political, and cultural change she facilitated.” Available at http://theses .ucalgary.ca//handle/11023/2326. Hasim, Wakhid. The Defense Mechanism of Raina Petkoff in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man Play: A Psychoanalytic Approach. B.A. dissertation. Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (Indonesia). 2015. Examines how the defense mechanism is reflected in Arm and the Man. “The purpose of this study is to analyze the personality of the main characters by making use of the structural elements and a psychoanalytic perspective.” Available at http://eprints.ums.ac.id/33159/. Isabel Estrada, Mo Antonia de. George Bernard Shaw y John Osborne: Recepción y Recreación de su Teatro en España durante el Franquismo. Ph.D. thesis. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. 2001. The work revolves around the censorship files for Shaw’s and Osborne’s plays, and how the texts were banned or amended prior to production in Spain. The censors’ verdicts on their works during Franco’s regime also lead to a broader discussion on the cultural life in Spain over a 40-year period. MacWhirter, Kristin. Heartbreak House, 1959: A Fantasia in What Manner? M.F.A. thesis. University of Calgary. 2014. It “is a reconstruction of the 1959 Broadway production” of Heartbreak House in light of the ramifications of the Cold War. As a consequence, the production betrayed Shaw’s original intention to a certain extent. Thus, “public and critics alike saw the show as a delightful bit of spectacle and ignored the message.” Available at http://theses.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/11023/1781/2/ ucalgary_2014_macwhirter_kristal.pdf. Maher, Ashley Kaitlin. Among the Modernist Ruins: British Writing and the Architecture of the State. Ph.D. thesis. Washington University, St. Louis. 2014. The abstract indicates the thesis discusses Shaw’s architecture a C o n t I n u I n G C H e C K L I S t o F S H av I a n a 339 criticism: “when Britain’s foremost modern architectural group needed a public figure to provide an anti-traditionalist introduction for the opening of their 1938 public exhibition, an aging George Bernard Shaw stepped in. Yet this body of architectural criticism has largely been erased from our understanding of both these authors’ [Shaw and H. G. Wells] careers and modern writing more generally.” Mariani, Nanik. Conversational Implicatures in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Ph.D. thesis. State University of Malang. 2003. Matchett, Grace. The Relationship of Parents and Children in the English Domestic Plays of George Bernard Shaw. Ph.D. thesis. University of Glasgow. 1990. An analysis of Shaw’s “domestic plays” with special attention to “the treatment of parent-child relationships,” which vary depending on the familial status of the family—hence sections devoted to plays that pivot around “single parents,” “the return of the absent parent,” “substitute parents,” and “happy families.” The study is limited to the early plays, specifically those begun before World War I. Ramos Pinto, Sara. Traduzir no vazio: a problemática da variação linguística nas traduções de Pygmalion, de G. B. Shaw e de My Fair Lady, de Alan Jay Lerner. Ph.D. thesis. Universidade de Lisboa (University of Lisbon, Portugal). 2010. Studies the challenges posed by linguistic variation (dialect, accent) in the Portuguese translations of Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. Rani, Sunita. George Bernard Shaw as a Critic with Special References to his Prefaces. Ph.D. thesis. Singh University. 2014. Discusses the formative influences on Shaw, with special attention to his childhood and early readings. The author divides Shaw’s critical production into three phases (early, middle, later), but with no clear criteria for said division: i.e., Back to Methuselah and The Apple Cart are discussed in the chapter corresponding to the early phase. Villanueva Romero, Diana. Contemporary Primate Literature in English: Voicing the Unvoiced. Ph.D. thesis. Franklin Institute/Universidad de Alcalá (Spain). 2015. Section 6.2—“The Modern Pygmalion: Crossing Boundaries in Peter Goldsworthy’s Wish (1995)”—analyzes how Peter Goldsworthy “uses a pygmalionesque framework” to deal with one of the categories that has always been considered a “distinctive element separating humans from nonhuman animals,” language. The novel is set “in the context of an experiment: teaching Sign to Eliza, a female gorilla who later will be renamed as Wish.” Viorel-Dragos, Moraru. Histopias: Narration, Narrativization, and Interpretation of History in Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. M.A. thesis 340 a C o n t I n u I n G C H e C K L I S t o F S H av I a n a (Maîtrise en littératures d’expression anglaise). Université Laval, Québec. 2014. Includes a series of references to Back to Methuselah as “perhaps the most important example of histopia before Barnes and Mitchell.” The author uses Shaw’s so-called Metabiological Pentateuch as a yardstick to contrast Barnes’s and Mitchell’s outlooks on history, scholarship, or philosophical influences (the Bible, Nietzsche). Available at http://scholar.google.es/scholar_url?url=http://theses.ulaval.ca/ archimede/fichiers/30995/30995.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm3_ GgYnYrJZAo4LuK_XQNhuX74nDw&oi=scholaralrt. Vlaskovic Ilic, Biljana. Историја У Драмском Стваралаштву Џорџа Бернарда Шоа: Контекст, Текст И Метатекст (History in George Bernard Shaw’s Dramatic Works: Context, Text, and Metatext). Ph.D. thesis. University of Kragujevac (Serbia). 2014. After the introductory section, including a vast literature review on literary-based approaches to history, the thesis is divided into two main chapters. From the summary in English: “The first chapter deals with Shaw’s religion of Creative Evolution and the Life Force, as well as the author’s search for a Superman, as shown in his artistic treatment of the great historical personages—Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Saint Joan, and Jesus Christ—whose “superhuman” nature is analyzed in the four subsequent subchapters. The second chapter focuses on Shaw’s three plays—John Bull’s Other Island, Heartbreak House, and Geneva—which reveal the fact that the author used certain plays as platforms with historical background in order to propose his own political views, express his criticism, and draw attention to the topical problems of his time. The three subsequent subchapters describe and comment on Shaw’s relationship to his native Ireland, the World Wars, and the great dictators.” Vlaskovic concludes that “not only does Shaw use history for life, the Nietzschean way, but he also uses it primarily as an incentive to provoke discussion of contemporary problems, which can be solved at the present moment if humanity is able and willing to learn from its own mistakes.” Available at https://fedorakg.kg.ac.rs/fedora/get/o:315/ bdef:Content/get. 5. Recordings and other Media4 Ansell-Pearson, Keith and Michael Holroyd. “National Theatre. Man and Superman.” Recording of the roundtable discussion on the Nietzschean concept of “übermensch” and its influence on Shaw’s play between Ansell-Pearson and Holroyd (chaired by Joan Bakewell). Available at https://soundcloud.com/nationaltheatre/shaw-superman. a C o n t I n u I n G C H e C K L I S t o F S H av I a n a 341 Archive.org. This site has undertaken a mammoth digitation project that has made available thus far a few hundred books, audio recordings, and video clips by or about Shaw. The digitized copies of the books are mostly from American and Canadian libraries, so the .pdf files also include the original stamps from the library they belonged to. This means that we come across different editions of the same plays, the Brentanos being the most common, for obvious reasons. It also allows users to read the books online and search for words within them via a very simple interface. Audio recordings and videos are also abundant, with a variety of file extensions to choose from; thus compatibility with the most common players is hardly ever a problem. California Artists Radio Theatre. Heartbreak House. Norman Lloyd stars in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House staged by the CART and directed by its founder Peggy Webber. http://blogs.indiewire .com/leonardmaltin/show-business-history-in-the-making-20140909 The recordings can be found at the CART website: www.cartradio.com/. Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la/). Although it also contains text files, most of them are linked to via the Haititrust.org repository. However, the collection of images is very interesting, adding up to more than 500 items. Among them are portraits and photographs of Shaw (sometimes with other celebrities), cartoons, newspaper clippings, autographed book pages, and images of different productions of his plays. Most of the images are part of the New York Public Library Digital Collections, although other contributors are also prominent, such as the National Archives and Records Administration. It may be a good idea to discard these altogether, as most of them are related to the former American TV anchor of the same nam