Most readers know Antonin Artaud as a theorist of the theatre and as a playwright, director and actor manque . Now, John C. Stouts highly original study installs Artaud as a writer and theorist of biography. In Alternate Genealogies Stout analyzes two separate but interrelated preoccupations central to Artauds work: the self-portrait and the family romance. He shows how Artaud, in several important but relatively neglected texts, rewrites the life stories of historical and literary figures with whom he identifies (for example, Paolo Ucello, Abelard, Van Gogh and Shelleys Francesco Cenci) in an attempt to reinvent himself through the image, or life, of another. Throughout the book Stout focusses on Artauds struggles to recover the sense of self that eludes him and to master the reproductive process by recreating the family in and as his own fantasies of it. With this research John C. Stout has added considerably to our understanding of Artaud. His book will be much appreciated by theatre scholars, Artaud specialists, Freudians, Lacanians and both theorists and practitioners of life writing.
- ISBN10 0889205914
- ISBN13 9780889205918
- Publish Date 1 January 2006 (first published 21 March 1996)
- Publish Status Unknown
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 144
- Language English