Jan Kott

January Kott ( born October 27, 1914 in Warsaw, † December 22, 2001 in Santa Monica, California ) was a Polish critic and author.

Professorship and exile

January Kott was one of the main European theater theorists of the present, specializing in the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays, in which Shakespeare today from 1965 is one of the standard works of modern Shakespeare research. During World War II he survived the Warsaw ghetto with the help of friends.

Since 1949 January Kott was a Professor of Literature, 1957, he resigned from the Communist Party. As a dedicated journalist, he signed in 1964 by 34 intellectuals wrote letter against censorship and the restriction of creative freedom. He was expelled from the University of Warsaw in 1968 and saw henceforth personal attacks exposed. January Kott emigrated to the United States, where he received a professorship.

Theater theory

Impressed by a 1955 popular in Paris Shakespeare directed by Peter Brook began a new reading of the classics to him. He was assisted by his personal experiences. In 1965, he summed up his Shakespeare sketches together in a book. This work made ​​him known worldwide and became the most widely read literary- critical work of a Polish intellectuals. For the theater from London to Tokyo his Shakespearean interpretations were groundbreaking. He has a lasting influence on the world's dramaturgical concepts of many present- productions and today these flow unnamed in every Shakespeare production with a.

January Kott interpreted the Elizabethan playwright overlooking the existential - political experiences of the 20th century. Shakespeare, Ionesco and Beckett, he faces the problem of totalitarian states. The exiled Pole January Kott taught at the universities of Yale and Berkeley. He died in 2001 at age 87.

Publications (selection )

  • Szekspir Współczesny. Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warsaw 1965. Shakespeare today. R. Piper Verlag, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-492-01823-8.
  • Shakespeare today. Advanced edition. Alexander Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-923854-46-3.
William Shakespeare Liberty Elizabethan era Name Authority File
430303
de