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The contemporary student of dramatic criticism in America, unlike his counterparts in poetry and fiction, does not have a well-developed theoretical and analytical foundation from which to proceed. Apart from a "heterogenous collection of aphorisms and traditional tags," dramatic criticism tends toward a discrete focus, based on the shifting ground of personal opinion. Seeking a more integral view, Father Porter persuasively recommends a course suggested by the Cambridge Anthropologists as a means to a more fundamental approach to dramatic criticism. His approach relates drama to the cultural milieu in which it is produced, and creates a basis upon which to examine dramatic structure and meaning in a unified context. In the Introduction, the author examines what is involved in the cultural milieu as it relates to the theater. He includes the immediate American cultural situation as well as the dramatic tradition inherited by the playwright from his predecessors and the heritage of Western culture, "in effect, all those attitudes, ideals and traditions that determine or affect values, supply strategies and pattern human activities." A careful analysis of each of the major components of the cultural milieu utilizes illustrations from the plays subsequently studied in the book. On the basis of this thorough groundwork, Father Porter has selected nine American plays for analysis. Some-Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party, and Archibald MacLeish's J. B.-draw on traditional or conventional literary and dramatic sources which are molded into a new dramatic shape by their fusion with American attitudes. Others-Sidney Kingsley's Detective Story, Miller's Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-use popular sub-literary genres or contemporary institutions to forge new patterns of dramatic action. Just as the preceding nine chapters illustrate the utility of a general theoretical approach to dramatic criticism in the analysis of individual works, the concluding chapter vindicates the approach in terms of the light it enables Father Porter to shed on American drama per se. This work combines the virtues of an agreeable style and clarity of presentation with scholarly analysis. It will be valuable to scholars and students and the theatergoing public.
Taking as its starting-point the 'death of tragedy' debate, and focusing on the supposed disappearance from the stage of the individual tragic hero, the book views selected plays and writings on the theatre by Miller, Williams, Maxwell Anderson and O'Neill as exemplifying four versions of heroism: idealism, martyrdom, self-reflection and survival. Julie Adam shows that these diverse playwrights share a desire to redefine tragic heroism in individualistic liberal terms.
The Myth of Identity in Modern Drama is the first book-length study on existential authenticity and its relation to ontological embodiment treated via analyses of characters of modern drama. Furthermore, it offers new methods of exploring characters and characterization and new ways of thinking about identity. Through its investigations of the plays of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean-Paul Sartre, the book shows that the study of embodiment will allow for a new method of analyzing characters and how they form, or attempt to form, ever-changing identities.
This anthology gathers some of Modern Drama's most distinguished pieces on America's four most important playwrights since Eugene O'Neill: Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and Sam Shepard. While Parker has chosen these authors "as representative of the main stream of American dramatic tradition," she does not offer a general overview of the plays or playwrights, nor any general orientation to aid the reader. These essays are written by scholars for serious students of American drama. The majority of the essays concentrate on a single play, and while they appeared decades ago, all were major articles in the field. Old but solid, they should still be of interest to students and scholars alike.
The final volume of Christopher Bigsby's critical account of American drama in the twentieth century.
New edition of Modern American Drama completes the survey and comes up to 2000.