Federico García Lorca’s ‘impossible’ theatre staged

This study explores the relatively unknown area of Federico García Lorca’s theatre work which he himself termed ‘impossible’ and ‘unperformable’. With the director’s task of preproduction research in mind, the study examines biographical research as well as focusing discussion on Lorca’s experimentation – as playwright and director – with different artistic styles and techniques seen as ground-breaking in his own time which pre-empted much modern theatre practice. Analysis of primary sources provides a widespread overview of Lorca’s dramatic work: his better-known plays, ‘impossible’ plays, dramatic dialogues and fragments of incomplete pieces as well as interviews and speeches. Key sources include the theories and ideas of professional directors (most prominently Lluís Pasqual) and scholars of Spanish theatre (especially Maria M. Delgado and Gwynne Edwards) as well as biographers (particularly Leslie Stainton). Principally concerned with the challenges presented to modern theatre-makers and the possibilities and guides for directors tackling these plays, the study concludes with reflection on the production of An Impossible Dream of Life which was composed from Lorca’s The Dream of Life and extracts from his other works to make up the practice-based component of this research project

On the eigenvalues of the spatial sign covariance matrix in more than two dimensions

Acknowledgments Alexander Dürre was supported in part by the Collaborative Research Grant 823 of the German Research Foundation. David E. Tyler was supported in part by the National Science Foundation grant DMS-1407751. A visit of Daniel Vogel to David E. Tyler was supported by a travel grant from the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance. The authors are grateful to the editors and referees for their constructive comments.Non peer reviewedPostprin

Dorothea and the \u27Key to all Mythologies\u27

In Middlemarch, the \u27dead hand\u27 of Edward Casaubon, which seeks to take hold of his wife\u27s future, is applied by two documents. The first is the codicil to his will which endeavours to prohibit Dorothea marrying Will Ladislaw by imposing the condition that to do so she must relinquish her inheritance. The second is the \u27Synoptical Tabulation\u27 in which he expresses the intention to have her continue his work on the \u27Key to all Mythologies\u27. As early as 1873, it was observed by Henry James that the subsequent narrative is dominated by the repercussions of the codicil: \u27Mr Casaubon\u27s death befalls about the middle of the story, and from this point to the close our interest in Dorothea is restricted to the question, will she or will [she] not marry Will Ladislaw?\u27\u27 The interest of the astute reader should engage with both aspects of Casaubon\u27s \u27dead hand\u27 however. While Dorothea\u27s relationship with Ladislaw may dominate the literal narrative, this essay proposes to show that the possibility of her continuing her first husband\u27s research exists as a quiet undercurrent throughout the novel until it begins to reemerge in the Finale, at which point it is hinted that she finally determines to complete the \u27Key to all Mythologies\u27. Dorothea\u27s potential for authorship finds a model in Saint Theresa, whom the Prelude establishes as at once a symbol and a point of contrast for the Middlemarch heroine. Saint Theresa wrote several books, but Eliot neglects these, preferring to focus on the Saint\u27s founding of convents. There is just one revelatory moment, in a passage concerning Casaubon\u27s scholarship, when the significance of Theresa\u27s writing in relation to Dorothea is foregrounded. Of the latter it is speculated, \u27If she had written a book she must have done it as Saint Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her conscience\u27 .2 The prologues of all Theresa\u27s major works claim that she has been charged to write by a (male) spiritual director.\u27 At a central moment in the novel, Dorothea receives a similar order. The crucial question of whether she lives up to the model provided by Saint Theresa thus tacitly asks whether she realizes her potential for authorship, whether she accepts Casaubon\u27s command to complete the \u27Key to all Mythologies\u27. The suggestion that the issue of Dorothea\u27s response to Casaubon\u27s request remains open is discordant with a critical tradition which allows Rosemary Ashton in her biography of Eliot to assert that Dorothea \u27refused\u27 to finish the worthless work of her distrustful husband\u27 .4 This seems to epitomize the general reading of this aspect of the novel. It is widely accepted that the search for a \u27Key to all Mythologies\u27 is a futile project which Casaubon\u27s death releases Dorothea from having to continue.\u27 But the death is not so much a release from an oppressive task as it is a release from the need to make an immediate decision whether to continue the \u27Key\u27. It is described in terms which show the impossibility of Dorothea furnishing Casaubon with any answer now: \u27But Dorothea never gave her answer\u27 (453), \u27But the silence in her husband\u27s ear was never more to be broken\u27 (453). Even the posture he has assumed when she finds him dead is one which he adopts when he is listening to her speak, as if he is waiting for an answer; \u27she had seen him take that attitude when she was reading to him\u27 (453)