Circus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning and Ritual - Hardcover

Paul Bouissac

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1441125639 ISBN 13: 9781441125637

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012

Synopsis

This volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse.

The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas.

It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Bouissac is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto (Victoria College), Canada. He is a world renowned figure in semiotics and a pioneer of circus studies. He runs the SemiotiX Bulletin [www.semioticon.com/semiotix] which has a global readership.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1441125639
• ISBN 13: 9781441125637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288