Impacts of Dramatic Theory and Criticism on the Development of Drama and Theatre: A Periscopic Survey

Abstract

The paper discusses, periscopically, the paradigmatic impacts of critical theory and criticism on the development of drama and theatre through the ages; from the classical periods; through the medieval, the Renaissance, the Romantic, Neoclassical to the modern period of realism and naturalism. It alludes to how each of these periods as well as the postmodernist period attempts to show its own temper as being radically different from their predecessors, and how; though the reader would note, unequivocally, that the apple hardly falls far from its tree progenitor. This is how the relationship between the anti-realistic modes and their realistic cousins can be perceived and interpreted. It briefly discusses the recurrent controversies between the Western dramatic weltanschauung vis-à-vis the African cosmology in terms of the theoretical impacts of the former on the latter, concluding that the need for African theory and criticism to come of age cannot be overemphasized.

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 8(1), 167-183, 2011