Arguments for a Historical Examination of the Discourse of Theatre and Film Criticism

Abstract

Paradoxically, historical studies of performing arts seem to have seldom approached the manner of development of critical discourses; and this, despite the  fact that the basic subject matter that comes to the aid of historiographers interested in arts (fewer and fewer of them can be seen in the academic  environment of my activity) is given by critical discourses: leading articles, essays, reviews, investigative pieces, feature reports and interviews from this or  that time. Very few researchers seem to have raised valid questions about the relationship between (artistic, theatrical…) creation and the critical discourses  meant to represent and assess it. A simple web search including the keywords “theatre”, “history”, “theatre criticism”, “rhetoric” will expose the austerity of  this field: such austerity may seem unfathomable, since, both from the viewpoint of the history of performing arts and from the viewpoint of the history  of aesthetic, social, philosophical or political ideas, interactions are essential and their dynamics is almost impossible to ignore. This is why this article seeks  to emphasize a number of primary themes, each of them potentially representing individual research stages that deserve subsequent systematic development.