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143-434: Despite involving absurd situations and characters, the genre generally maintains at least a slight degree of realism and narrative continuity within the context of the irrational or ludicrous situations, often distinguishing it from completely absurdist or fantastical genres. Farces are often episodic or short in duration, often being set in one specific location where all events occur. Farces have historically been performed for

286-410: A collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts , unlike other forms of literature , is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex ( c.  429 BCE ) by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama. A modern example

429-462: A low culture , popular culture , or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital . In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification , clothing or jewelry . Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in

572-406: A culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation. The notion of

715-406: A dancing floor (orchestra), dressing room and scene-building area (skene). Since the words were the most important part, good acoustics and clear delivery were paramount. The actors (always men) wore masks appropriate to the characters they represented, and each might play several parts. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance -drama that formed an important part of

858-437: A distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of

1001-474: A full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation ." There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of cultural heritage and cultural diversity . UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in

1144-574: A group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in

1287-476: A historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language , but also films , photographs , fashion , or hairstyles :

1430-438: A larger brain. The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans . However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It

1573-847: A limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism . From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie , created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy , communication , sociology , social theory , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , cultural anthropology , philosophy , museum studies , and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology , nationality , ethnicity , social class , and/or gender . Cultural studies

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1716-406: A member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of

1859-468: A modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, " refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism , and through artifice, become fully human." In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and

2002-522: A new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud , who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with

2145-428: A particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired

2288-533: A particular type. Kālidāsa in the 1st century BCE, is arguably considered to be ancient India 's greatest Sanskrit dramatist. Three famous romantic plays written by Kālidāsa are the Mālavikāgnimitram ( Mālavikā and Agnimitra ), Vikramuurvashiiya ( Pertaining to Vikrama and Urvashi ), and Abhijñānaśākuntala ( The Recognition of Shakuntala ). The last was inspired by a story in the Mahabharata and

2431-432: A person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately." The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society . For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as

2574-500: A play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). In Ancient Greece however, the word drama encompassed all theatrical plays, tragic, comic, or anything in between. Drama is often combined with music and dance : the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs ; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring

2717-417: A real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage . The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture , speech, song, music , and dance . It is the oldest form of drama , though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance

2860-431: A result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science . The sociology of culture grew from

3003-524: A tool for developing dramatic work or skills or as a form for situational comedy. Spolin also became interested in how the process of learning improvisation was applicable to the development of human potential. Spolin's son, Paul Sills popularized improvisational theatre as a theatrical art form when he founded, as its first director, The Second City in Chicago. Having been an important part of human culture for more than 2,500 years, theatre has evolved

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3146-421: A vehicle to tell a story qualify as comedies. This may include a modern farce such as Boeing Boeing or a classical play such as As You Like It . Theatre expressing bleak, controversial or taboo subject matter in a deliberately humorous way is referred to as black comedy . Black Comedy can have several genres like slapstick humour, dark and sarcastic comedy. Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that

3289-435: A very colourful shadow. The thin rods which controlled their movements were attached to a leather collar at the neck of the puppet. The rods ran parallel to the bodies of the puppet and then turned at a ninety degree angle to connect to the neck. While these rods were visible when the shadow was cast, they laid outside the shadow of the puppet; thus they did not interfere with the appearance of the figure. The rods are attached at

3432-697: A wide range of different theories and practices. Some are related to political or spiritual ideologies, while others are based purely on "artistic" concerns. Some processes focus on a story, some on theatre as event, and some on theatre as catalyst for social change. The classical Greek philosopher Aristotle , in his seminal treatise, Poetics ( c.  335 BCE ) is the earliest-surviving example and its arguments have influenced theories of theatre ever since. In it, he offers an account of what he calls "poetry" (a term which in Greek literally means "making" and in this context includes drama — comedy , tragedy , and

3575-471: Is La Farce de maître Pathelin ( The Farce of Master Pathelin ) from c. 1460. Spoof films such as Spaceballs , a comedy based on the Star Wars movies, are farces. Sir George Grove opined that the "farce" began as a canticle in the common French tongue intermixed with Latin . It became a vehicle for satire and fun, and thus led to the modern Farsa or Farce, a piece in one act, the subject of which

3718-436: Is Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill (1956). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle 's Poetics ( c.  335 BCE ); the earliest work of dramatic theory . The use of "drama" in the narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the 19th century . Drama in this sense refers to

3861-583: Is comparative cultural studies , based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson , and Raymond Williams , and later that of Stuart Hall and others at

4004-437: Is a concept that encompasses the social behavior , institutions , and norms found in human societies , as well as the knowledge , beliefs , arts , laws , customs , capabilities, attitude , and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization , which

4147-413: Is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for

4290-745: Is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form. Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution , renovation, reconception , reform, innovation , revivalism, revolution , mutation , progress , diffusion , osmosis , borrowing, eclecticism , syncretism , modernization, indigenization , and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and

4433-663: Is an ancient form of storytelling that renowned for its elaborate puppet/human and complex musical styles. The earliest evidence is from the late 1st millennium CE, in medieval-era texts and archeological sites. The oldest known record that concerns wayang is from the 9th century. Around 840 AD an Old Javanese (Kawi) inscriptions called Jaha Inscriptions issued by Maharaja Sri Lokapala from Mataram Kingdom in Central Java mentions three sorts of performers: atapukan, aringgit, and abanol. Aringgit means Wayang puppet show, Atapukan means Mask dance show, and abanwal means joke art. Ringgit

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4576-459: Is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung : "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people." In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During

4719-422: Is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on

4862-411: Is considered a central concept in anthropology , encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies . Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art , music , dance , ritual , religion , and technologies like tool usage , cooking , shelter , and clothing . The concept of material culture covers

5005-644: Is described in an 11th-century Javanese poem as a leather shadow figure. Theatre in the medieval Islamic world included puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as ta'ziyeh , where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history . In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the istishhād (martyrdom) of Ali 's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali . Secular plays were known as akhraja , recorded in medieval adab literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theatre. Theatre took on many alternative forms in

5148-419: Is extravagant and the action ludicrous. [REDACTED] This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain : Grove, Sir George (1908). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians . New York, McMillan. Theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses , to present experiences of

5291-539: Is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander . Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind of blunder or ugliness that does not cause pain or disaster. In addition to the categories of comedy and tragedy at the City Dionysia, the festival also included the Satyr Play . Finding its origins in rural, agricultural rituals dedicated to Dionysus,

5434-469: Is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes , where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in

5577-520: Is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology , linguistic anthropology , cultural anthropology , and in the United States and Canada, archaeology . The term Kulturbrille , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas , refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille , which allow

5720-419: Is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude: in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. Aristotle's phrase "several kinds being found in separate parts of the play" is a reference to the structural origins of drama. In it

5863-437: Is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to

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6006-472: Is the most famous. It was the first to be translated into English and German . Śakuntalā (in English translation) influenced Goethe 's Faust (1808–1832). The next great Indian dramatist was Bhavabhuti ( c.  7th century CE ). He is said to have written the following three plays: Malati-Madhava , Mahaviracharita and Uttar Ramacharita . Among these three, the last two cover between them

6149-527: Is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology

6292-826: Is universally acknowledged in the Western critical tradition", Marvin Carlson explains, "almost every detail about his seminal work has aroused divergent opinions." Important theatre practitioners of the 20th century include Konstantin Stanislavski , Vsevolod Meyerhold , Jacques Copeau , Edward Gordon Craig , Bertolt Brecht , Antonin Artaud , Joan Littlewood , Peter Brook , Jerzy Grotowski , Augusto Boal , Eugenio Barba , Dario Fo , Viola Spolin , Keith Johnstone and Robert Wilson (director) . Culture Culture ( / ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər / KUL -chər )

6435-518: Is why actors are commonly called "Children of the Pear Garden". During the dynasty of Empress Ling, shadow puppetry first emerged as a recognized form of theatre in China. There were two distinct forms of shadow puppetry, Pekingese (northern) and Cantonese (southern). The two styles were differentiated by the method of making the puppets and the positioning of the rods on the puppets , as opposed to

6578-546: The 20th century in the realism of Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg , the political theatre of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht , the so-called Theatre of the Absurd of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco , American and British musicals, the collective creations of companies of actors and directors such as Joan Littlewood 's Theatre Workshop , experimental and postmodern theatre of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage ,

6721-508: The City Dionysia as an audience member (or even as a participant in the theatrical productions) in particular—was an important part of citizenship . Civic participation also involved the evaluation of the rhetoric of orators evidenced in performances in the law-court or political assembly , both of which were understood as analogous to the theatre and increasingly came to absorb its dramatic vocabulary. The Greeks also developed

6864-602: The Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer 's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan 's theory of cultural evolution . Just as some critics have argued that

7007-563: The Persian response to news of their military defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE—is the notable exception in the surviving drama. When Aeschylus won first prize for it at the City Dionysia in 472 BCE, he had been writing tragedies for more than 25 years, yet its tragic treatment of recent history is the earliest example of drama to survive. More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in

7150-787: The Romantic movement was an interest in folklore , which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture , namely that of the ruling social group , and low culture . In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies. Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy ; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau , contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau,

7293-547: The Romantic era , scholars in Germany , especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire —developed a more inclusive notion of culture as " worldview " ( Weltanschauung ). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has

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7436-569: The Sundanese and wayang kulit (leather shadow-puppet play) of the Javanese and Balinese —draw much of their repertoire from indigenized versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata . These tales also provide source material for the wayang wong (human theatre) of Java and Bali , which uses actors. Some wayang golek performances, however, also present Muslim stories, called menak . Wayang

7579-559: The high-style , verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca . Although Rome had a native tradition of performance, the Hellenization of Roman culture in the 3rd century BCE had a profound and energizing effect on Roman theatre and encouraged the development of Latin literature of the highest quality for the stage. The only surviving plays from the Roman Empire are ten dramas attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE),

7722-516: The postcolonial theatre of August Wilson or Tomson Highway , and Augusto Boal 's Theatre of the Oppressed . Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance . The term comes from a Greek word meaning " action ", which is derived from the verb δράω, dráō , "to do" or "to act". The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience , presupposes collaborative modes of production and

7865-514: The satyr play —as well as lyric poetry , epic poetry , and the dithyramb ). He examines its "first principles" and identifies its genres and basic elements; his analysis of tragedy constitutes the core of the discussion. Aristotle argues that tragedy consists of six qualitative parts, which are (in order of importance) mythos or "plot", ethos or "character", dianoia or "thought", lexis or "diction", melos or "song", and opsis or "spectacle". "Although Aristotle's Poetics

8008-573: The specificity of theatre as synonymous expressions that differentiate theatre from the other performing arts , literature and the arts in general. A theatre company is an organisation that produces theatrical performances, as distinct from a theatre troupe (or acting company), which is a group of theatrical performers working together. Modern theatre includes performances of plays and musical theatre . The art forms of ballet and opera are also theatre and use many conventions such as acting , costumes and staging. They were influential in

8151-587: The stage and film. The term farce is derived from the French word for "stuffing", in reference to improvisations applied by actors to medieval religious dramas . Later forms of this drama were performed as comical interludes during the 15th and 16th centuries. The oldest surviving farce may be Le Garçon et l'aveugle ( The Boy and the Blind Man ) from after 1266, although the earliest farces that can be dated come from between 1450 and 1550. The best known farce

8294-484: The well-made plays of Scribe and Sardou gave way to the problem plays of Naturalism and Realism ; the farces of Feydeau ; Wagner's operatic Gesamtkunstwerk ; musical theatre (including Gilbert and Sullivan 's operas); F. C. Burnand 's, W. S. Gilbert 's and Oscar Wilde 's drawing-room comedies; Symbolism ; proto- Expressionism in the late works of August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen ; and Edwardian musical comedy . These trends continued through

8437-465: The 1st century CE. It began after the development of Greek and Roman theatre and before the development of theatre in other parts of Asia. It emerged sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE and flourished between the 1st century CE and the 10th, which was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written. The wealth of archeological evidence from earlier periods offers no indication of

8580-431: The 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory , have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness . Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies . In the wider social sciences , the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from

8723-407: The 5th century BCE have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . The origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century BCE it was institutionalized in competitions ( agon ) held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysus (the god of wine and fertility ). As contestants in the City Dionysia's competition (the most prestigious of

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8866-588: The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham . This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture ; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the " culture industry " (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see

9009-553: The Corduba-born Stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero. These tragedies are known for their philosophical themes, complex characters, and rhetorical style. While Seneca's plays provide valuable insights into Roman theater, they represent only a small fraction of the dramatic repertoire that existed in ancient Rome. The first form of Indian theatre was the Sanskrit theatre , earliest-surviving fragments of which date from

9152-664: The Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on

9295-545: The French had a larger distinction between comedy and tragedy, whereas the English fudged the lines occasionally and put some comedic parts in their tragedies. Common forms of non-comedic plays were sentimental comedies as well as something that would later be called tragédie bourgeoise , or domestic tragedy —that is, the tragedy of common life—were more popular in England because they appealed more to English sensibilities. While theatre troupes were formerly often travelling,

9438-507: The Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BCE, with a performance by Etruscan actors . Beacham argues that they had been familiar with "pre-theatrical practices" for some time before that recorded contact. The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre , nude dancing, and acrobatics , to the staging of Plautus 's broadly appealing situation comedies , to

9581-813: The U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age , plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture , which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion ,

9724-482: The United States. In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all

9867-820: The West between the 15th and 19th centuries, including commedia dell'arte from Italian theatre , and melodrama . The general trend was away from the poetic drama of the Greeks and the Renaissance and toward a more naturalistic prose style of dialogue, especially following the Industrial Revolution . Theatre took a big pause during 1642 and 1660 in England because of the Puritan Interregnum. The rising anti-theatrical sentiment among Puritans saw William Prynne write Histriomastix (1633),

10010-630: The Woods (1986), and The Phantom of the Opera (1986), as well as more contemporary hits including Rent (1994), The Lion King (1997), Wicked (2003), Hamilton (2015) and Frozen (2018). Musical theatre may be produced on an intimate scale Off-Broadway , in regional theatres , and elsewhere, but it often includes spectacle. For instance, Broadway and West End musicals often include lavish costumes and sets supported by multimillion-dollar budgets. Theatre productions that use humour as

10153-581: The anxious, unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein , who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil

10296-587: The best known of which is Peking Opera which is still popular today. Xiangsheng is a certain traditional Chinese comedic performance in the forms of monologue or dialogue. In Indonesia , theatre performances have become an important part of local culture, theatre performances in Indonesia have been developed for thousands of years. Most of Indonesia's oldest theatre forms are linked directly to local literary traditions (oral and written). The prominent puppet theatres — wayang golek (wooden rod-puppet play) of

10439-658: The change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict . In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group. Cultural change , or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage. Culture

10582-490: The concept of bildung : "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: " Sapere Aude " ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms,

10725-552: The concepts of dramatic criticism and theatre architecture. Actors were either amateur or at best semi-professional. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama : tragedy , comedy , and the satyr play . The origins of theatre in ancient Greece, according to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the first theoretician of theatre, are to be found in the festivals that honoured Dionysus. The performances were given in semi-circular auditoria cut into hillsides, capable of seating 10,000–20,000 people. The stage consisted of

10868-471: The dealings of the pantheon of Gods and their involvement in human affairs, backed by the chorus of Satyrs . However, according to Webster , satyr actors did not always perform typical satyr actions and would break from the acting traditions assigned to the character type of a mythical forest creature. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans . The Roman historian Livy wrote that

11011-433: The development of musical theatre . The city-state of Athens is where Western theatre originated. It was part of a broader culture of theatricality and performance in classical Greece that included festivals , religious rituals , politics , law , athletics and gymnastics, music , poetry , weddings, funerals, and symposia . Participation in the city-state's many festivals—and mandatory attendance at

11154-454: The dialogue ( melodrama and Japanese Nō , for example). In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern Romantic ) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed. In improvisation , the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience. Music and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times— Athenian tragedy , for example,

11297-434: The distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects. Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen

11440-484: The elements of theatre, the Treatise gives most attention to acting ( abhinaya ), which consists of two styles: realistic ( lokadharmi ) and conventional ( natyadharmi ), though the major focus is on the latter. Its drama is regarded as the highest achievement of Sanskrit literature . It utilised stock characters , such as the hero ( nayaka ), heroine ( nayika ), or clown ( vidusaka ). Actors may have specialized in

11583-477: The entire epic of Ramayana . The powerful Indian emperor Harsha (606–648) is credited with having written three plays: the comedy Ratnavali , Priyadarsika , and the Buddhist drama Nagananda . The Tang dynasty is sometimes known as "The Age of 1000 Entertainments". During this era, Ming Huang formed an acting school known as The Pear Garden to produce a form of drama that was primarily musical. That

11726-411: The event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg , President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and

11869-481: The existence of a tradition of theatre. The ancient Vedas ( hymns from between 1500 and 1000 BCE that are among the earliest examples of literature in the world) contain no hint of it (although a small number are composed in a form of dialogue ) and the rituals of the Vedic period do not appear to have developed into theatre. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been

12012-517: The festivals to stage drama) playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play. The performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BCE; official records ( didaskaliai ) begin from 501 BCE, when the satyr play was introduced. Most Athenian tragedies dramatize events from Greek mythology , though The Persians —which stages

12155-541: The field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al. ), which seeks to challenge

12298-628: The first improvisation form. Popularized by 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Dario Fo and troupes such as the Upright Citizens Brigade improvisational theatre continues to evolve with many different streams and philosophies. Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin are recognized as the first teachers of improvisation in modern times, with Johnstone exploring improvisation as an alternative to scripted theatre and Spolin and her successors exploring improvisation principally as

12441-488: The form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing", on

12584-415: The globe during the process of colonization . Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation . The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to

12727-436: The highly stratified capitalist systems of the West . In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion . According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved

12870-675: The idea of the national theatre gained support in the 18th century, inspired by Ludvig Holberg . The major promoter of the idea of the national theatre in Germany, and also of the Sturm und Drang poets, was Abel Seyler , the owner of the Hamburgische Entreprise and the Seyler Theatre Company . Through the 19th century , the popular theatrical forms of Romanticism , melodrama , Victorian burlesque and

13013-415: The individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of sophistication in the arts , sciences, education , or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and

13156-414: The intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx , Durkheim , and Weber ) with the growing discipline of anthropology , wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in

13299-672: The late 19th and early 20th century . After the Edwardian musical comedy that began in the 1890s, the Princess Theatre musicals of the early 20th century, and comedies in the 1920s and 1930s (such as the works of Rodgers and Hammerstein ), with Oklahoma! (1943), musicals moved in a more dramatic direction. Famous musicals over the subsequent decades included My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1980), Cats (1981), Into

13442-431: The liberatory aspects of fandom . The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School , but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on

13585-416: The material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. When used as a count noun , a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions , and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values

13728-407: The matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art , classical music , and haute cuisine . As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from Latin: civitas , lit.   'city'). Another facet of

13871-464: The most complete work of dramaturgy in the ancient world. It addresses acting , dance , music , dramatic construction , architecture , costuming , make-up , props , the organisation of companies, the audience, competitions, and offers a mythological account of the origin of theatre. In doing so, it provides indications about the nature of actual theatrical practices. Sanskrit theatre was performed on sacred ground by priests who had been trained in

14014-471: The most notorious attack on theatre prior to the ban. Viewing theatre as sinful, the Puritans ordered the closure of London theatres in 1642 . On 24 January 1643, the actors protested against the ban by writing a pamphlet titled The Actors remonstrance or complaint for the silencing of their profession, and banishment from their severall play-houses . This stagnant period ended once Charles II came back to

14157-411: The necessary skills (dance, music, and recitation) in a [hereditary process]. Its aim was both to educate and to entertain. Under the patronage of royal courts, performers belonged to professional companies that were directed by a stage manager ( sutradhara ), who may also have acted. This task was thought of as being analogous to that of a puppeteer —the literal meaning of " sutradhara " is "holder of

14300-410: The necks to facilitate the use of multiple heads with one body. When the heads were not being used, they were stored in a muslin book or fabric-lined box. The heads were always removed at night. This was in keeping with the old superstition that if left intact, the puppets would come to life at night. Some puppeteers went so far as to store the heads in one book and the bodies in another, to further reduce

14443-422: The notion of progress. Rein Raud , building on the work of Umberto Eco , Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander , has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to

14586-538: The notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis . The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism . Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups: In 2016,

14729-437: The oldest surviving work of dramatic theory —his Poetics ( c.  335 BCE ). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, "Old Comedy", "Middle Comedy", and "New Comedy". Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes , while Middle Comedy is largely lost (preserved only in relatively short fragments in authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis ). New Comedy

14872-549: The organization of production. In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture ; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall , who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as

15015-539: The other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across

15158-405: The other. In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of increasing activity by national and international organizations. The UN and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in

15301-439: The peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. " bro culture "), or a counterculture . Within cultural anthropology , the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation

15444-422: The perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures , which themselves are subject to change. Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models , and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example,

15587-446: The physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions ), mythology , philosophy , literature (both written and oral ), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. In the humanities , one sense of culture as an attribute of

15730-704: The physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres" (or "theaters"), as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece , from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres , and many of its themes , stock characters , and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pavis defines theatricality, theatrical language , stage writing and

15873-582: The possibility of reanimating puppets. Shadow puppetry is said to have reached its highest point of artistic development in the eleventh century before becoming a tool of the government. In the Song dynasty , there were many popular plays involving acrobatics and music. These developed in the Yuan dynasty into a more sophisticated form known as zaju , with a four- or five-act structure. Yuan drama spread across China and diversified into numerous regional forms, one of

16016-439: The production of meaning . This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts . In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures , such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of

16159-495: The refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as " noble savages " living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by

16302-443: The remainder of the Puritans and very religious of the time. The main question was if seeing something immoral on stage affects behaviour in the lives of those who watch it, a controversy that is still playing out today. The seventeenth century had also introduced women to the stage, which was considered inappropriate earlier. These women were regarded as celebrities (also a newer concept, thanks to ideas on individualism that arose in

16445-418: The same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" ( Elementargedanken ); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" ( Völkergedanken ), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for

16588-449: The same word goes back to Latin colere , 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus , 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." Culture described by Richard Velkley : ... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in

16731-422: The satyr play eventually found its way to Athens in its most well-known form. Satyr's themselves were tied to the god Dionysus as his loyal woodland companions, often engaging in drunken revelry and mischief at his side. The satyr play itself was classified as tragicomedy, erring on the side of the more modern burlesque traditions of the early twentieth century. The plotlines of the plays were typically concerned with

16874-460: The scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric ) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy ). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama , the tragicomic , and epic theatre . Improvisation has been a consistent feature of theatre, with the Commedia dell'arte in the sixteenth century being recognized as

17017-452: The seeds of Sanskrit drama. This treatise on grammar from 140 BCE provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India . The major source of evidence for Sanskrit theatre is A Treatise on Theatre ( Nātyaśāstra ), a compendium whose date of composition is uncertain (estimates range from 200 BCE to 200 CE) and whose authorship is attributed to Bharata Muni . The Treatise is

17160-596: The spoken parts were written in the Attic dialect whereas the choral (recited or sung) ones in the Doric dialect , these discrepancies reflecting the differing religious origins and poetic metres of the parts that were fused into a new entity, the theatrical drama . Tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilisation . That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet

17303-461: The strings or threads". The performers were trained rigorously in vocal and physical technique. There were no prohibitions against female performers; companies were all-male, all-female, and of mixed gender. Certain sentiments were considered inappropriate for men to enact, however, and were thought better suited to women. Some performers played characters their own age, while others played ages different from their own (whether younger or older). Of all

17446-568: The term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans , in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians , in a common activity", as Raymond Williams puts it. From its obscure origins in the theatres of Athens 2,500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , through its singular articulations in

17589-435: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups ) and popular culture , but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach

17732-459: The theatrical culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period . No tragedies from the 6th century BCE and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during

17875-771: The theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture , political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies . Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food , sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production , which led them to focus on class relations and

18018-721: The throne in 1660 in the Restoration . Theatre (among other arts) exploded, with influence from French culture, since Charles had been exiled in France in the years previous to his reign. In 1660, two companies were licensed to perform, the Duke's Company and the King's Company . Performances were held in converted buildings, such as Lisle's Tennis Court . The first West End theatre , known as Theatre Royal in Covent Garden , London,

18161-532: The time because of his use of floor space and scenery. Because of the turmoil before this time, there was still some controversy about what should and should not be put on the stage. Jeremy Collier , a preacher, was one of the heads in this movement through his piece A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage . The beliefs in this paper were mainly held by non-theatre goers and

18304-560: The tradition of textual theory. Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture , and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect

18447-429: The type of play performed by the puppets. Both styles generally performed plays depicting great adventure and fantasy, rarely was this very stylized form of theatre used for political propaganda. Japanese forms of Kabuki , Nō , and Kyōgen developed in the 17th century CE. Cantonese shadow puppets were the larger of the two. They were built using thick leather which created more substantial shadows. Symbolic colour

18590-519: The wake of Renaissance Humanism ), but on the other hand, it was still very new and revolutionary that they were on the stage, and some said they were unladylike, and looked down on them. Charles II did not like young men playing the parts of young women, so he asked that women play their own parts. Because women were allowed on the stage, playwrights had more leeway with plot twists, like women dressing as men, and having narrow escapes from morally sticky situations as forms of comedy. Comedies were full of

18733-435: The way for the modern understanding of religion. Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology , where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically , and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology

18876-572: The way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures . As different cultures dictate distinctive norms , culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in

19019-412: The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture . Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture

19162-465: The work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy . In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture ; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about

19305-475: The works of Shakespeare , Lope de Vega , Racine , and Schiller , to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg , Beckett's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering, and Müller's postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. In the wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at

19448-471: The writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau 's criticism of " modern liberalism and Enlightenment ." Thus a contrast between "culture" and " civilization " is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor , it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as

19591-540: The young and very much in vogue, with the storyline following their love lives: commonly a young roguish hero professing his love to the chaste and free minded heroine near the end of the play, much like Sheridan's The School for Scandal . Many of the comedies were fashioned after the French tradition, mainly Molière, again hailing back to the French influence brought back by the King and the Royals after their exile. Molière

19734-457: Was a form of dance - drama that employed a chorus whose parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos —an instrument comparable to the modern oboe ), as were some of the actors' responses and their 'solo songs' ( monodies ). Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that also combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance. It emerged from comic opera (especially Gilbert and Sullivan ), variety , vaudeville , and music hall genres of

19877-440: Was also very prevalent; a black face represented honesty, a red one bravery. The rods used to control Cantonese puppets were attached perpendicular to the puppets' heads. Thus, they were not seen by the audience when the shadow was created. Pekingese puppets were more delicate and smaller. They were created out of thin, translucent leather (usually taken from the belly of a donkey). They were painted with vibrant paints, thus they cast

20020-574: Was designed by Thomas Killigrew and built on the site of the present Theatre Royal, Drury Lane . One of the big changes was the new theatre house. Instead of the type of the Elizabethan era, such as the Globe Theatre , round with no place for the actors to prepare for the next act and with no "theatre manners", the theatre house became transformed into a place of refinement, with a stage in front and stadium seating facing it. Since seating

20163-422: Was no longer all the way around the stage, it became prioritized—some seats were obviously better than others. The king would have the best seat in the house: the very middle of the theatre, which got the widest view of the stage as well as the best way to see the point of view and vanishing point that the stage was constructed around. Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg was one of the most influential set designers of

20306-516: Was one of the top comedic playwrights of the time, revolutionizing the way comedy was written and performed by combining Italian commedia dell'arte and neoclassical French comedy to create some of the longest lasting and most influential satiric comedies. Tragedies were similarly victorious in their sense of righting political power, especially poignant because of the recent Restoration of the Crown. They were also imitations of French tragedy, although

20449-683: Was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory . Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis . As

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