The leading scholarly publication on Brecht; volume 43 contains a wealth
of articles on diverse topics and a reconstruction of the two-chorus
version of The Exception and the Rule.
Published for the International Brecht Society by Camden House, the
Brecht Yearbook is the central scholarly forum for discussion of
Brecht's life and work and of topics of interest to him, especially the
politics of literature and theater in a global context. It encourages a
wide variety of perspectives and approaches and, like Brecht, is
committed to the use value of literature, theater, and theory.
Volume 43 opens with a reconstruction of Brecht's two-chorus version of
The Exception and the Rule (Reiner Steinweg) and continues with a
selection of Helmut Heißenbüttel's reviews of Brecht's work. Four
articles (by Christine Künzel, Carsten Mindt, Judith Niehaus, and
Sebastian Schuller) address Brechtian aspects of Gisela Elsner's novels.
The next two essays (by Hunter Bivens and Friedemann Weidauer) revisit
Brecht's reflections on affect and empathy. Also included are papers
from the 2016IBS "Recycling Brecht" Symposium: on Brecht's recycling of
Lenin in his "neue Dramatik" (Joseph Dial), on Paul Celan as a
reconfiguration of Brecht (Paul Peters), on Brecht's adaptation of
Shakespeare's Coriolanus (MartinRevermann), and on Hilary Mantel's
Brechtian reconfiguration of Thomas Cromwell (Markus Wessendorf). The
volume features Richard Schröder's farewell lecture on Brecht's Life of
Galileo and an essay by Ulrich Plass on BerndStegemann's allegedly
Brechtian reclamation of critical realism. It concludes with Zhang Wei's
interview with the Chinese dramaturg, playwright, and Brecht translator
Li Jianming.
Editor Markus Wessendorf is a Professorin the Department of Theatre and
Dance at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu.
