Frank Blank

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: Anthony Squiers

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Political Science

Title: The Social and Political Philosophy of Bertholt Brecht

Committee:
Dr. Emily Hauptman, Chair
Dr. Barbara Foley
Dr. Rudolf Siebert
Dr. Jacinda Swanson

Date: Friday, October 19, 2012 10:00 a.m. to Noon
3309 Friedmann Hall

Abstract:
Bertolt Brecht is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in Twentieth Century literature. An acclaimed poet, he is best known as a playwright and director. His ‘epic theatre’ revolutionized the theatre by creating radical breaks from traditional literary and theatrical form. These radical breaks were done in an effort to facilitate radical social change. Specifically, Brecht designed his epic theatre as a revolutionary aesthetic which would help bring about the advent of a Marxist revolution. There is a broad corpus of academic work which analyzes the formalistic elements of his work. However, this body of work has been severely limited by a formalistic understanding of Brecht’s thought and work and neglects his unique philosophical contributions to Marxism. This dissertation serves to remedy this by reconstructing Brecht’s social and political philosophy into a single theoretical framework. In doing this, the dissertation presents Brecht’s thought in context of a revolutionary Marxist aesthetic and explores his vision of historical materialism, dialectic of enlightenment, social ontology, epistemological foundations and ethics, in an effort to reveal his relevance today. This is accomplished by meticulous readings of his theoretical writings and deep analysis of three of his plays, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Life of Galileo, and his adaption of Coriolanus.