Brecht and Method - Softcover

Frederic Jameson elegantly dissects the intricate connections between Brecht's drama and politics, demonstrating the way these combined to shape a unique and powerful influence on a profoundly troubled epoch. Through Brecht's entire corpus and a cryptic work unpublished in Brecht's lifetime, entitled Me-ti; Book of Twists and Turns, Jameson finds Brecht not prescriptive but performative. He sees Brecht's method as a multi-layered process of reflection, reference and self-reference, which tears open a gap for individuals to situate themselves in the third person, and to use that self-projection in history as a basis for judgement.

"In his analysis of Brecht, Jameson forgoes the sort of chronological representation of Brecht in his various 'stages' (the early Brecht, the political Brecht, the mature Brecht) that characterizes most analyses of his work and instead asks that we recognize the various layers of history, overlapping in time, not space, which ultimately constitute who we understand as 'Brecht.'" - The Bookpress "Jameson puts demands on the reader, requiring great effort just to keep up, but those who apply themselves will come away with new admiration for Brecht as artist and as thinker. Recommended." - Choice "It is a rich book, one that strikes out in many different directions at once...perhaps the secret of Jameson's greatness, like Brecht's, is that he doesn't adhere to his method too strictly." - In These Times "This book contains a highly recommendable, elegant dissection of Brecht's method, from estrangements to allegory and beyond." - Modern Drama