Main text

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Main text , as the concept of drama analysis , describes the spoken text given for the persons represented . In contrast to this, a secondary text is understood to mean all further information given in a drama text.

description

Because otherwise it would not be understandable, a series of secondary texts is required for each dramatic main text. Such secondary texts are above all: designations of the dramatis personae, markings of nudes and scenes , stage directions (also called "Didaskalien"), information on the setting , scenery and stage design , on costumes , masks , on the gestures and facial expressions of the actors, on their appearance And exit, etc. But the title of the piece, prologues and epilogues are also important as secondary texts. On the one hand, they orient the performance of a play, and on the other - especially in the case of the reading drama - its reading .

In the more recent literary theoretical terminology of Gérard Genette , the relationship between main and secondary text can also be understood as the relationship between text and paratext (or in the German translation: of work and "accessories"). The design of the secondary text particles is regulated by a large number of elaborate typographical conventions. " Figure names are indicated by small caps , nudes and scene counts are set off by capital letters in a larger font, and scenes and instructions are almost consistently differentiated through italics ."

The relationship between the main and secondary text should be described, with their quantitative and qualitative relationships being historically and typologically variable: while Shakespeare texts, for example, had no secondary text except for the names of the speakers (nudes and scenes were added later), romantic ones stand out Dramas such as Ludwig Tieck's Puss in Boots (1797) or Clemens Brentano's Ponce de Leon (1803) are characterized by a sub-text architecture that is as complex as it is playful, and in Samuel Beckett's Act without Words I (1957) the sub-text contains the entire plot.

literature

  • Anke Detken: In the room next to the text. Director's remarks in dramas of the 18th century. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009 (=  Theatron 54), ISBN 978-3-11-023002-4 .
  • Manfred Pfister: The drama. Theory and analysis. Fink, Munich 1977 (=  Uni-Taschenbücher. Literaturwissenschaft 580), ISBN 3-7705-1368-1 , p. 35.
  • Elke Platz-Waury : Side text. In: Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft . Revision of the real dictionary of German literary history. Edited by Harald Fricke u. a. Volume 2. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-015663-6 , pp. 693-695.
  • Gerhard Tschauder: Who “tells” the drama? Attempt a typology of the secondary text. In: Language and Literature in Science and Education 22.2 (1991), pp. 50–67.
  • Susanne Wehde: Typographic Culture. A theoretical and cultural-historical study of typography and its development. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-35069-5 , pp. 122-126.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The terminological distinction follows the suggestion of Roman Ingarden : The literary work of art. With an appendix on the functions of language in theater plays (1931). 4th edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1972, pp. 220-222.
  2. ↑ Platz-Waury: Side text, p. 694.
  3. ^ Wehde: Typographische Kultur, pp. 123/125; as (ibid., p. 124, given) example of a classical main-secondary text design: Friedrich Schiller : Don Karlos. Infant of Spain (1787). Georg Joachim Göschen , Leipzig 1802, p. 3 (digitized version of the BSB) .