from Part II - Themes and Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2025
This chapter surveys a range of engagements with religion in the modernist theatre, from T. S. Eliot’s vision for a new Christian drama to Bertolt Brecht’s fascination with the Bible, and from Sylvia Wynter’s staging of Afro-diasporic ritual practices to Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatisation of Buddhist legend. Such works, this chapter shows, tend to favour syncretic and heterodox expressions of religious subjects, frequently drawing together multiple doctrinal or ritual traditions within a single performance. These modern dramas of religion are examined across four sections: ‘Modernist Iconoclasms’, on dramatists who sought to dismantle religion’s influence; ‘Temples of a Living Art’, on artists who sought to remake theatre in the image of religion; ‘Ritual and Sacrifice’, on theatre and metaphysics; and ‘Allegories and Parables of Renewal’, on the intersection of religious allegory with social change. Throughout these sections, the chapter illustrates the plural and paradoxical roles for religion assigned on the modernist stage.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.