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DRAMATIC GENRE, RITUAL, CONELICT RESOLUTION hand, there is the systematic thesis that all drama at all times is also ritual in principle and essence, and always has ritual components. Most or even all of the contributors to the present volume will be more interested in the second thesis: that ritual is always at work in drama. Another distinction should be underlined. It does make a difference if we are a.) practicing drama theory and viewing specific forms of drama or entire genres as developments or conceptual correlates of certain rituals (e.g., an entire tragedy or even the genre of tragedy as an adaptation or "translation" of sacrificial rites); or if we are b.) doing criticism and discussing specific ritual elements within a play (e.g., as inserts that fulfil a specific function within a performance, like a marriage ritual). It is one of the merits of Fischer’s book that it is not content with merely observing isolated ritualistic components in a play; rather, it reserves the category “poetic rituality” for those performances which have elevated ritual to be the foundational, organizing, and unifying principle that informs all of their parts. (Note that this approach may thus presuppose a definition of the artwork as an organic whole.)* While the most conspicuous use of ritual in theatrical performance appears to occur in the tragic function, there is another, seemingly diametrically opposed use of ritual in performance that has attracted the majority of the remaining attention: the comic one. We can observe such an alternative function in, for example, the communal rite of mocking the old king and inaugurating the adolescent king, and the subsequent feast of rejoicing. Note that, in this case, we may already have discovered the possibility of sequencing two ritual elements in such a way as to promote an overall conflict resolution. Continuing our inquiry in this direction, we are in a position to ask: can ritual contribute toward aims beyond the two fundamental yet divisive genres of tragedy and comedy? May ritual help establish a fundamental pattern of dramatic action that would engage in serious conflict but eventually lead it toward productive resolution? We know ritual can be employed in destructive fashion, but how might ritual further a play’s non-exclusionary objectives, even reconciliatory ones, on stage and outside of the theater? Both Turner and Schechner see ritual as transformative, most often in productive ways; and the drama of reconciliation by definition aims to be transformative toward conflict resolution. Ritual and drama of reconciliation thus appear to be able to function together. If ritual, as Braungart emphasizes, possesses both an ritual transforming into theatrical performance, see Victor Turner: Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6 (1979), 490-494; and Victor Turner: Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, New York, Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982, 20-60. For the distinction between ritualistic elements in drama versus ritualas informing an entire play’s shape, see Thomas B. Stroup: Ritualand Ceremony in the Drama, Comparative Drama 11.2 (1977), 139-146, 142, 144.
