Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Interesting stuff about Bertolt Brecht's Galileo
Today I went to see Dr. Korfhage with questions about last night's reading, along with some general questions about the difference between Bertolt Brecht's Galileo and Mckay's Galileo. Bertolt Brecht was a German playwright born in 1898. Brecht was a communist and a dramatist who believed that plays should make you think. Brecht thought that if a character was like-able then the audience would begin to stop thinking about the meaning of the play itself, blinded by their fondness for the character. Brecht purposely made his Galileo a greedy, stubborn, and rude man, a person the audience would not sympathize with. When his Galileo and the Galileo from McKay are compared, there are no obvious traces of Galileo's personality that matches Brecht's character's demeanor. Thank you Dr. Korfhage for shedding some light on the two Galileos.
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So what can we learn about Galileo from Galileo? Can we learn anything about early modern history?
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that despite the fact that Bertolt Brecht was a communist, he chose to depict Galileo's revolution against the authority in such a complimentary way. Even though Communism believes in a classless society, leaders do have a firm grip on their people. One would think he would take the Church's side by portraying it in the novel in a better light.
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