VÝVOJ A SPÔSOBY PREŽITIA BRITSKÉHO MAŇUŠKOVÉHO DIVADLA PUNCH A JUDY – VYTVÁRANIE POST-TRADIČNEJ TRADÍCIE

• Authors: Martin J. Reeve

Title variants

EN

Evolution and survival of the British Punch and Judy glove puppet show: the shaping of a post-traditional tradition

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

Punch and Judy is one of a number of traditional popular glove puppet forms found across Europe. It is, by a considerable margin, the most numerous of these forms. This paper seeks to account for its relative success. It calls on research undertaken as part of an ethnographic study of contemporary performance undertaken between 2006 and 2007 towards a doctoral thesis. The research consisted of historical analysis and contemporary field-work. The article concludes that the success of the show in part depended on its emergence at a moment when late-modern class identity was coming to be constructed in Britain, that new class-oriented markets were emerging which commoditised cultural products, that performers adapted themselves and the show to these markets, professionalising themselves and, in more recent times, instituting organisations whose purpose was to secure the profile of the form. It goes on to suggest that current western preoccupations with heritage have provided a useful role for the form. The article argues that Punch and Judy puppet show has used the mechanisms of late-modernity to maximise its capital as an ostensibly traditional form.

Keywords

EN

PUPPET; GLOVE PUPPET SHOW; PUNCH AND JUDY; TRADITION; BRITAIN

• Publisher: Institute of Ethnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenský národopis (Slovak Ethnology)
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 60
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 245 – 258

Contributors

author

Martin J. Reeve

• Avalon, Telegraph View, Old Liverton, Devon TQ12 6HN, United Kingdom