Alienation and Theatricality

Alienation (Vefremdung) is a concept inextricably linked with the name of twentieth-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht - with modernism, the avant-garde and Marxist theory. However, as Phoebe von Held argues in this book, ''alienation'' as a sociological and aesthetic notionavant la lettre had already surfaced in the thought of eighteenth-century French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot. ...