Under the guiding concepts ‘pluralization’ and ‘authority’, the series presents studies [of the Munich Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 573] on the Early Modern Age from the 15th to the 17th century. Increasingly, the cultural sciences recognize the Early Modern Age as an epoch that was dependent on the exigencies of medieval tradition, but at the same time created the preconditions for the transition of ‘Old Europe’ to the Modern Age. In contrast to the established historical grand narratives of modernization, secularization and progress, the dynamics of the epoch is conceived in the volumes of the series as complex, mutually competing world views, knowledge resources, norms and behavior patterns showing no clear direction. This interdisciplinary series explores the fundamental dynamics of this epoch from the perspectives of literature and linguistics, history, philosophy, and art, music and legal history. 

Under the guiding concepts ‘pluralization’ and ‘authority’, the series presents studies [of the Munich Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 573] on the Early Modern Age from the 15th to the 17th century. Increasingly, the cultural sciences recognize the Early Modern Age as an epoch that was dependent on the exigencies of medieval tradition, but at the same time created the preconditions for the transition of ‘Old Europe’ to the Modern Age. In contrast to the established historical grand narratives of modernization, secularization and progress, the dynamics of the epoch is conceived in the volumes of the series as complex, mutually competing world views, knowledge resources, norms and behavior patterns showing no clear direction. This interdisciplinary series explores the fundamental dynamics of this epoch from the perspectives of literature and linguistics, history, philosophy, and art, music and legal history. 

Der Band vereinigt erstmalig die Interpretationen von insgesamt einundzwanzig Theaterstücken zwanzig verschiedener Autoren und bietet einen repräsentativen Querschnitt der Entwicklung des italienischen Theaters des Novecento. Den Beginn macht das „symbolistische“ Theater Gabriele D’Annunzios, gefolgt von einem Stück von Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, dem Begründer des Futurismus, sowie vom „grotesken“ Theater Luigi Chiarellis und Pier Maria Rosso di San Secondos. Es schließt sich Luigi Pirandello mit zwei berühmten Dramen an, und Roberto Bracco, Alberto Savinio und Massimo Bontempelli machen den Leser mit alternativen Theaterkonzepten bekannt. Es folgen Aldo De Benedetti, Ugo Betti, Diego Fabbri, Eduardo De Filippo, Natalia Ginzburg, Giovanni Testori, Dario Fo, Dacia Maraini, Pier Paolo Pasolini und Carmelo Bene. Das neapolitanische Theater ist durch Annibale Ruccello vertreten, und den Abschluss bildet der szenische Monolog Novecento von Alessandro Baricco. Dass natürlich gegebenenfalls auch die Debatte über den Vorrang des „teatro dei registi“ oder des „teatro della parola“ zur Sprache kommt, ist selbstverständlich.