@article{Ungelenk2023, author = {Ungelenk, Johannes}, title = {Unavailable—Escaping the 'Realm of Purpose' with Roland Barthes}, series = {Unavailable : the joy of not responding}, journal = {Unavailable : the joy of not responding}, publisher = {Kulturverlag Kadmos}, address = {Berlin}, isbn = {978-3-86599-549-0}, pages = {35 -- 45}, year = {2023}, language = {en} } @article{Ungelenk2020, author = {Ungelenk, Johannes}, title = {Satyrs, Spirits and Dionysian Intemperance in Shakespeare's 'Tempest'}, series = {Cahiers {\´E}lisab{\´e}thains}, volume = {101}, journal = {Cahiers {\´E}lisab{\´e}thains}, number = {1}, publisher = {Sage Publications}, address = {London}, issn = {0184-7678}, doi = {10.1177/0184767819897082}, pages = {45 -- 64}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The article focuses on the rebellious subplot of William Shakespeare's The Tempest that forms around Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, and reads it as a satyr play. Demonstrated is how the Dionysian subplot stands in close analogical connection with the play's main action. It is also argued that the storyline emphasises a dimension of the play that is of high relevance to the analysis of its metatheatrical implications. The correspondences between the main action and the satyr play elements highlight the important role that intemperance, excess and the suspension of control play in the Shakespearean theatrical setting.}, language = {en} } @article{Ungelenk2022, author = {Ungelenk, Johannes}, title = {Kiss me (not!), Cressida - or: the social touch of lips and tongue}, series = {Arcadia : international journal of literary culture}, volume = {57}, journal = {Arcadia : international journal of literary culture}, number = {1}, publisher = {De Gruyter}, address = {Berlin}, issn = {0003-7982}, doi = {10.1515/arcadia-2022-9051}, pages = {25 -- 46}, year = {2022}, abstract = {The article is dedicated to the problem of social bonds that is negotiated in Troilus and Cressida. Troilus and Ulysses embody an old, traditional order of the world that is out of joint, while Cressida's behaviour and her way of interacting indicate a different and new regime of social regulation that is about to take over. With its complex superposition of (touches of) love and war, Troilus and Cressida brings together rituals of touch, anarchic speech acts, and a gendered perspective on the world that associates touch and temporality with 'frail' femininity and temptation. With unrivalled intensity, the play puts to the spectator that the basic condition of touch, i.e. exposing oneself to another, entails an incalculable risk. Hector tragically falls for the vulnerability inherent in touch and the audience suffers with him because they share this existential precondition on which modern society is 'founded.' The gloomy, inescapable atmosphere of societal crisis that Troilus and Cressida creates emphasises the fact that the fragility of touch is not to be overcome. The fractions - no matter whether Greek, Trojan, or those of loving couples - cannot simply be reunited to form a new, authentic entity. Generating at least some form of social cohesion therefore remains a challenge.}, language = {en} } @article{Ungelenk2021, author = {Ungelenk, Johannes}, title = {{\´E}mile Zola and the Literary Language of Climate Change}, series = {Nottingham French Studies}, volume = {60}, journal = {Nottingham French Studies}, number = {3}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0331}, pages = {362 -- 373}, year = {2021}, abstract = {On 7 February 1861, John Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy, delivered a historical lecture: he could prove that different gases absorb heat to a very different degree, which implies that the temperate conditions provided for by the Earth's atmosphere are dependent on its particular composition of gases. The theoretical foundation of climate science was laid. Ten years later, on the other side of the Channel, a young and ambitious author was working on a comprehensive literary analysis of the French era under the Second Empire. {\´E}mile Zola had probably not heard or read of Tyndall's discovery. However, the article makes the case for reading Zola's Rougon-Macquart as an extensive story of climate change. Zola's literary attempts to capture the defining characteristic of the Second Empire led him to the insight that its various milieus were all part of the same 'climate': that of an all-encompassing warming. Zola suggests that this climate is man-made: the economic success of the Second Empire is based on heating, in a literal and metaphorical sense, as well as on stoking the steam-engines and creating the hypertrophic atmosphere of the hothouse that enhances life and maximises turnover and profit. In contrast to Tyndall and his audience, Zola sensed the catastrophic consequences of this warming: the Second Empire was inevitably moving towards a final d{\´e}b{\^a}cle, i.e. it was doomed to perish in local and 'global' climate catastrophes. The article foregrounds the supplementary status of Tyndall's physical and Zola's literary knowledge. As Zola's striking intuition demonstrates, literature appears to have a privileged approach to the phenomenon of man-induced climate change.}, language = {en} } @book{Ungelenk2023, author = {Ungelenk, Johannes}, title = {Touching at a Distance}, series = {Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy : ECSSP}, journal = {Edinburgh Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy : ECSSP}, publisher = {Edinburgh University Press}, address = {Edinburgh}, isbn = {978-1-4744-9784-8}, doi = {10.1515/9781474497848}, pages = {296}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Studies the capacity of Shakespeare's plays to touch and think about touchBased on plays from all major genres: Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing and Troilus and CressidaCentres on creative, close readings of Shakespeare's plays, which aim to generate critical impulses for the 21st century readerBrings Shakespeare Studies into touch with philosophers and theoreticians from a range of disciplinary areas - continental philosophy, literary criticism, psychoanalysis, sociology, phenomenology, law, linguistics: Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Niklas Luhmann, Hans Blumenberg, Carl Schmitt, J. L. AustinTheatre has a remarkable capacity: it touches from a distance. The audience is affected, despite their physical separation from the stage. The spectators are moved, even though the fictional world presented to them will never come into direct touch with their real lives. Shakespeare is clearly one of the master practitioners of theatrical touch. As the study shows, his exceptional dramaturgic talent is intrinsically connected with being one of the great thinkers of touch. His plays fathom the complexity and power of a fascinating notion - touch as a productive proximity that is characterised by unbridgeable distance - which philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Jean-Luc Nancy have written about, centuries later. By playing with touch and its metatheatrical implications, Shakespeare raises questions that make his theatrical art point towards modernity: how are communities to form when traditional institutions begin to crumble? What happens to selfhood when time speeds up, when oneness and timeless truth can no longer serve as reliable foundations? What is the role and the capacity of language in a world that has lost its seemingly unshakeable belief and trust in meaning? How are we to conceive of the unthinkable extremes of human existence - birth and death - when the religious orthodoxy slowly ceases to give satisfactory explanations? Shakespeare's theatre not only prompts these questions, but provides us with answers. They are all related to touch, and they are all theatrical at their core: they are argued and performed by the striking experience of theatre's capacities to touch - at a distance}, language = {en} }