Zapraszamy na pierwszy w nowym roku wykład dziekański "We're Off to See The Wizard. Enchantment and Disenchantment in the "Land of Oz" Theme Park", który wygłosi dr David Allen (Midland Actors Theatre, Newman University UK).Wykład prowadzony będzie w języku angielskim i odbędzie się 9 stycznia w auli A1 Wydziału Filologicznego UŁ o godzinie 17:45.
'We're Off to See the Wizard' Enchantment and Disenchantment in The Land of Oz Theme Park
"This isn't a play or a pageant or a movie. It's the Land of Oz. Dorothy's dream world come true."
Dr. David Allen discusses the way the Land of Oz theme park in North Carolina, evoked both the Jeffersonian vision of America as a pastoral garden, and the Romantic dream of the world as our Heimat or 'home.'
Frank L. Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) has been described as 'the first distinctive attempt to construct a fairyland out of American materials'. The author drew on European traditions of fairy tales, but also adapted them for the American context. At the same time, the novel may be seen as a reaffirmation of the Jeffersonian pastoral myth: the vision of America as 'virgin land.'
The Land of Oz theme park operated on Beech Mountain (in the Appalachian region) from 1970 to 1980. For adult visitors, it was a place where they could reconnect with part of their own childhood; and play at the idea of being in an enchanted world, somewhere 'over the rainbow' - both the fairyland of Oz, and the lost 'wonderland' of the American pastoral myth.