Devotes to the topic of the play within the play. This title explores the wide range of aesthetic, literary-theoretical and philosophical issues associated with this rhetorical device, not only in terms of its original meta-theatrical setting but also with regard to a variety of different generic applications.

Acknowledgements Gerhard FISCHER & Bernhard GREINER: The Play within the Play: Scholarly Perspectives I. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF SELF-REFLECTION Bernhard GREINER: The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm Yifen BEUS: Self-Reflexivity in the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation Klaus R. SCHERPE: ‘Backstage Discourse’: Staging the Other in Ethnographic and Colonial Literature David ROBERTS: The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation Caroline SHEAFFER-JONES: Playing and not Playing in Jean Genet’s The Balcony and The Blacks II. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AND META-THEATRE Christian SINN: The Figure in the Carpet: Metadramatical Concepts in Jacob Bidermann’s Cenodoxus (1602) John GOLDER: Holding a Mirror up to Theatre: Baro, Gougenot, Scudéry and Corneille as Self-Referentialists in Paris, 1628-1635/36 Manfred JURGENSEN: Rehearsing the Endgame: Max Frisch’s Biography: A Play Barnard TURNER: Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (1968) and The Real Thing (1982): New Frames and Old Ulrike LANDFESTER: The Invisible Fool: Botho Strauss’s Postmodern Metadrama and the History of Theatrical Reality Shimon LEVY: Queen of a Bathtub: Hanoch Levin’s Political, Aesthetic and Ethical Metatheatricality Gad KAYNAR: The Disguised and Distanced Real(ity) Play within the Fictitious Play in Israeli Stage-Drama Zahava CASPI: A Lacerated Culture, A Self-Reflective Theatre: The Case of Israeli Drama III. PERSPECTIVES ON THE WORLD: COMEDY, MELANCHOLY, THEATRUM MUNDI Frank ZIPFEL: ‘Very Tragical Mirth’: The Play within the Play as a Strategy for Interweaving Tragedy and Comedy Herbert HERZMANN: Play and Reality in Austrian Drama: The Figure of the Magister Ludi Helmut J. SCHNEIDER: Playing Tragedy: Detaching Tragedy from Itself in Classical Drama from Lessing to Büchner Gerhard FISCHER: Playwrights Playing with History: The Play within the Play and German Historical Drama (Büchner, Brecht, Weiss, Müller) Birgit HAAS: Postmodernism Unmasked: Rainald Goetz’s Festung and Albert Ostermaier’s The Making of B-Movie IV. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF SOCIO-CULTURAL REFLECTION AND INTERCULTURAL APPROPRIATION Lada Cale FELDMAN: The Context Within: The Play within the Play between Theatre Anthropology, System Theory and Postcolonial Critique Maurice BLACKMAN : Intercultural Framing in Aimé Césaire’s Une Tempête Kyriaki FRANTZI: Re-Interpreting Shadow Material in an Ancient Greek Myth: Another Night: Medea V. THE PLAY WITHIN THE PLAY AS AGENCY OF INTERMEDIAL TRANSFORMATION Yvonne NOBLE: John Gay and the Frame Play Donald BEWLEY: Opera within Opera: Contexts for a Metastasian Interlude Theresia BIRKENHAUER: Theatrical Transformation, Media Superimposition and Scenic Reflection: Pictorial Qualities of Modern Theatre and the Hofmannsthal/Strauss Opera Ariadne auf Naxos Erika GREBER: Pushkin in Love, or: A (Screen)Play within the Play. The Cinematic Potential of Romantic-Ironic Narration in Eugene Onegin Alessandro ABBATE: The Text within the Text, the Screen within the Screen: Multi-Layered Representations in Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet and Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet Ken WOODGATE: ‘Gotta Dance’ (in the Dark): Lars von Trier’s Critique of the Musical Genre Tim MEHIGAN: The Game of the Narrative: Kleist’s Fiction from a Game-Theoretical Perspective Alexander HONOLD: French Beans and Mashed Potatoes: Agonistic Play and Symbolic Acting in Gottfried Keller’s Prose Fiction Ulrike GARDE: Playing with the Apparatus: Franz Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ and Barrie Kosky’s Interpretation for the Melbourne International Arts Festival Notes on Contributors Index of Names