This work approaches dramatic genre from the point of view of the degree of richness and strength of a character's potential. Its main focus is to establish a methodology for analyzing the potential from multidimensional perspectives using systems thinking. The whole concept is an alternative to the Aristotelian plot-based approach and is applied to an analysis of western and eastern European authors as well as contemporary American film. This study consists of three parts. The first part is mostly theoretical, proposing a new definition of the dramatic as a category linked to general systems phenomena and offering a new classification of dramatic genre. The second part offers a contextual analysis of some works based on this new classification. The third part explores an analysis of the comedy of a new type - CNT. Its emphasis is on the integration of the part and the whole in approaching the protagonist's potential.
V. Ulea is a literary critic, writer, film director, and lecturer of Russian Language and Literature, Comparative Literature, and Literature and Business in the Department of Slavic Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of eleven books of prose, poetry, and literary criticism, among them, About Angels: A Treatise.
"Ulea's work is not only original and innovative, it is well argued and it is a most valuable contribution to the fields of dramatic and literary theory, especially to theories of the comic and comedy. It is one of the most creative, intellectually invigorating, and useful works of literary theory I have read in a long time." -Steven Toetoesy de Zepetnek, editor of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture "V. Ulea attempts here a very ambitious thing, nothing less than a poetics of dramatic character as an alternative to the familiar, Aristotelian plot-based approach. She brings to her task a sophisticated understanding of human systems-organic, intelligent, capable of learning-and of their ability to interact creatively as psychological mechanisms in the best sense of the word: that is, as mechanisms for generating potentials. Chekhov, especially, will never quite sound the same."-Caryl Emerson, Princeton University "Dramatic genre deals with the potential of the artistic universe, which can be measured based on the methodology elaborated for indeterministic systems, taking into account the peculiarity of the artistic system when compared to other systems. I distinguish between three types of potential that correspond to three types of dramatic genre-dramedy, drama, and comedy."-V. Ulea, from the Preface
