The End Of The Circus
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The End of the Circus
Author: Paul Bouissac
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date: 2021-08-12
This book analyses two features of the traditional circus that have come under increasing attack since the mid-20th century: the use of wild animals in performance and the act of clowning. Positioning this socio-cultural change within the broader perspective of evolutionary semiotics, renowned circus expert Paul Bouissac examines the decline of the traditional circus and its transformation into a purely acrobatic spectacle. The End of the Circus draws on Bouissac's extensive ethnographic research, including previously unpublished material on the training of wild animals and clown make-up, to chart the origins of the circus in Gypsy culture and the drastic change in contemporary Western attitudes on ethical grounds. It scrutinizes the emergence of the new form of circus, with its focus on acrobatics and the meaning of the body, showing how acrobatic techniques have been appropriated from traditional Gypsy heritage and brought into the fold of mainstream popular entertainment. Questioning the survival of the new circus and the likely resurgence of its traditional forms, this book showcases Bouissac's innovative approach to semiotics and marks the culmination of his ground-breaking work on the circus.
The Night Circus
THE TIKTOK SENSATION Discover the million-copy bestselling fantasy read. The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon an iron gates reads: Opens at Nightfall Closes at Dawn Full of breath-taking amazements and open only at night, Le Cirque des Rêves seems to cast a spell over all who wander its circular paths. But behind the glittering acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists a fierce competition is underway. Celia and Marco are two young magicians who have been trained since childhood for a deadly duel. With the lives of everyone at the Circus of Dreams at stake, they must test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love. Complete your collection with The Starless Sea, the second novel from the author of the The Night Circus, out now. 'The only response to this novel is simply: wow. It is a breath-taking feat of imagination, a flight of fancy that pulls you in and wraps you up in its spell' The Times
The End of the Circus
Author: Paul Bouissac
language: en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Release Date: 2021-09-09
Acknowledgements -- 1. Overture: Themes and Variations -- Introduction -- Whence and wither the 'traditional' circus? -- 'Death to the circus' -- Clowns on the wane -- The body: from ritual to spectacle -- The human tragedy: "You! Wretched Gypsies!" -- 2. First Movement, Andante Sostenuto: The Time of the Gypsies -- Who are the Gypsies? -- Where do Gypsies come from? -- Contrapuntal development #1 -- Being a Gypsy: the bane or bliss of difference -- A deeper time perspective -- The circus enters history: Was Philip Astley a Gypsy? -- The art of survival -- Contrapuntal development #2: What is a name? -- Our inner Gypsy -- An ode to resilience -- On the flipside -- The evolution of space, time, and cultures -- 3. Second Movement Vivace Furioso: Animals -- A memory -- Hunger rules the world -- The human animal: the game of life and death -- Bear power -- The hyena men of Nigeria -- Wolves -- The death of a tigress -- Hunger never stops -- From non-animal humans to non-human animals -- The cage acts of yesteryears -- What is a wild animal? -- The antiquity of the animal circus: the elephants -- The antiquity of the animal circus: the predators -- Wild utopia -- Ethos, ethics, and the Peterson effect -- A self-defeating strategy -- Cultural entropy and semiotic panic -- 4. Third Movement, Adagio Lamentendo: Clowns -- Perplexed clowns -- Masks -- What is a clown? -- A detour to India: the Vidûshaka -- A modern master: Charlie Chaplin -- Two kinds of laughter -- The twilight of the clown: off-limit humor -- The clown and its discontents -- The white-face clown: the waxing and waning of a cultural hero -- Black face matters -- The crucifixion of the clown -- Free speech and the clowns: Is Jordan Peterson a trickster? -- 5. Fourth Movement, Maestoso Appassionato: Bodies -- What is a body? -- Modes of survival -- Life on the brink of death -- Epiphanies -- The body brought into play -- Greatness and misery of acrobats' bodies -- Negotiating one's own body: benefit-to-cost ratio -- Bodies unbound -- The visceral circus: bodies of fear and desire -- Technological evolution and the perception of risk -- For your eyes only: Eros at the circus -- From ritual to spectacle -- 6. Coda, Sforzando -- Resistance and resilience -- The downfall of the traditional circus -- The Anthropocene delusion -- The reign of anthropomorphism -- The return of the hyenas -- References -- Index.