Circus as Multimodal Discourse: Performance, Meaning, and Ritual

(Paperback)

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Now available in paperback, 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 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.

Reviews

"Bouissac's decades-long circus career combines with his semiotic expertise, producing an elucidating guide to the precedents and developments of various circus acts and their hitherto unspoken modes of communication. ... Bouissac's work it is encouraging to find literature that takes an analytical approach to current performance work." - Katharine Kavanagh, Theatre Research International

Author Bio

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.