Terms and meanings
Cosi – Louis Nowra
Cosi fan tutte
• Cannot be directly translated but has a number
of accepted interpretations
• Women behave that way
• School for lovers
• Women are like that
Bourgeois romanticism
• a delusion of middle class
people, idle wishful
thinking, or an empty
meaningless convention
of the middle class.
• Romanticism that
belongs to a person
whose political,
economic, and social
opinions are believed to
be determined mainly by
concern for property
values and conventional
respectability.
• Romaniticism - of, pertaining to, or
of the nature of romance;
characteristic or suggestive of the
world of romance: a romantic
adventure.
• fanciful; impractical; unrealistic:
romantic ideas.
• imbued with or dominated by
idealism, a desire for adventure,
chivalry, etc.
• characterized by a preoccupation
with love or by the idealizing of love
or one's beloved.
• displaying or expressing love or
strong affection.
• ardent; passionate; fervent.
Lucy suggests
• Anything to do with love such as a play about
love is common, trendy, unrealistic, fanciful etc
as opposed to the real, significant and important
issues of her life such as protesting about the
Vietnam War.
Metatheatre
• theatre that comments on itself. Or theatre that
is additional to theatre (Play within the play)
Farce
• in a play it is broad humour based on
exaggerations such as clowning, coincidences,
and improbabilities.
• There is farce in the basic plot – mentally ill
patients performing an opera they cannot sing,
or understand the language of with an
inexperienced director
Ideology
• the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that
guides an individual, social movement,
institution, class, or large group.
Intertextuality
• the content of a text, such as plot, language, or
other reference, has its origin or stimulus in
another text – ie the intertextuality of Cosi and
Cosi fan Tutte
Joie de vive
• the joy of life
Vicissitudes
• changes or variations or alternating phases that
occur in the natural order of things.
• Vicissitudes of life - successive, alternating, or
changing phases or conditions, as of life or
fortune; ups and downs: They remained friends
through the vicissitudes of 40 years.
Projection
• psychological – tendency to attribute to another
person the ideas, feelings, or sentiments that are
actually in oneself.
• Which character does this?
Poignant • keenly distressing to the feelings: poignant
regret. The poignancy of Julie’s death highlights
for audiences that recovery from mental illness
and addiction is not easy.
• keen or strong in mental appeal: a subject of
poignant interest. - The play holds poignant
interest for audiences.
• affecting or moving the emotions: a poignant
scene. The play’s ending is poignant
Irony
• a technique of indicating, as through character or
plot development, an intention or attitude opposite
to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
• Irony exists in the parallels between lewis’ love life
‘off stage’ and his love life ‘on stage’. On stage the
infidelity is treated light heartedly – in ‘character’ of
Fiordiligi and Ferrando, it is a trick, and the
emotional turmoil is portrayed as comedy. In the
blurred lines of Cosi, Julie returns to her true lover
just as in Cosi fan tutte. Off stage – Lewis is
devastated by Lucy’s infidelity. He is moving out of
the house, the relationship is over.
A beat
• This is a feature of expressionism – (a style of
playwriting and stage presentation stressing the
emotional content of a play, the subjective
reactions of the characters, symbolic or abstract
representations of reality, and non naturalistic
techniques of scenic design.)
• It emphasises the emotional reactions - it
intends to underline a key emotional moment –
a moment of perception, or awarenss