Brecht Through Classical Chinese Philosophy

This book studies a cluster of Brecht’s works, including The Good Person of Szechwan, Mother Courage and Her Children , The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Schweyk in the Second World War , his adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus , and Stories of Mr. Keuner , through the lens of classical Chinese philosophy as espoused by Confucius, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Mozi, Xunzi, Guanzi, and others, zooming in on the dynamic, dialectical, and high-stakes tensions between ethics and survival in a world of absurdity torn by existential crises. More specifically, this book studies the selected Brechtian works as parables of ethics and survival that embody and espouse Brecht’s sociopolitical, ethical, and aesthetic ideologies shaped by his essentially Marxist worldviews as well as his exposure to classical Chinese culture, philosophy and theatrical arts, and in doing so will contribute meaningfully to the fields of comparative drama/theatre studies, comparative literature studies, intercultural studies, and performance studies.