7. A continuing dialogue. Modernism and tradition -- Youthful mentors: Nietzsche and Strindberg -- Modernism contra modernity -- An American modernism -- Melodrama as modernity -- Prophesying a modern American stage -- From Harvard to Greenwich Village -- After Provincetown -- Journeying into the past -- 2. A Modernist in the Making : O'Neill Before Broadway -- An early "skit" -- First publication: Testing the waters -- Trying the longer form: Two early portraits of an artist -- Finding his voice -- Among the bohemians -- The homeless life at sea -- Haunted by the primitive sea -- Staging suicide -- After the revolution -- 3. Tragedy and the Postrevolutionary Condition -- Youthful revolutionary verse and drama -- Yank's personal revolution in The Hairy Ape -- Defying empire in Lazarus Laughed -- Days Without End: A failed revolution of the soul -- A touch of the revolutionary: The American history cycle -- Revolution as pipe dream: The Iceman Cometh -- 4. New Women, Male Destinies: The "Woman Plays" -- Early portraits: Now I Ask You and The Straw -- Women and marriage in three plays of the early 1920s -- Her own boss: Anna Christie -- O'Neill's "woman play" -- Dynamo and the modern goddess -- A Moon for the Misbegotten: The limits of female representation -- 5. "Souls under Skins": Masks, Race, and the Divided American Self -- Modernity as double consciousness -- Up from blackface: The Dreamy Kid -- A nation's alienated history: The Emperor Jones -- All God's Chillun Got Wings: Race and American modernity -- The Fountain and Marco Millions as mirrors of modernity -- The play of masks in The Great God Brown -- Unmasking Irishness in A Touch of the Poet -- 6. Transience and Tradition: O'Neill's Modern Families -- Filial strife in The Rope and Exorcism -- Remaking the dramatic family: Beyond the Horizon -- Removing the walls: Desire Under the Elms -- Family as mask in Mourning Becomes Electra -- The happy modernism of Ah, Wilderness! -- Homelessness in Long Day's Journey Into Night -- 7. Critical Perspectives -- O'Neill: Biography, Autobiography, and Standing in for Eugene (G.) O'Neill / Sheila Hickey Garvey -- The Literary O'Neill / Alexander Pettit -- O'Neill's Emperor Jones: Racing the Great White Way / Katie N. Johnson -- Tony Kushner's O'Neill: Seeking Meaning on Marblehead Neck / Sheila Hickey Garvey -- Conclusion: O'Neill After O'Neill -- Conjuring the dead -- The Experimental Theatre, cont. -- A global legacy -- A continuing dialogue.
Summary:
"The Theatre of Eugene O'Neill offers a new comprehensive overview of O'Neill's career and plays in the context of the American theatre. Organized thematically, it considers his modernist intervention in the theatre, offers readers detailed analysis of the plays, and assesses the recent resurgence in his reputation and new approaches to staging his work. It includes a study of all his major plays - The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Desire Under the Elms - besides numerous other full-length and one-act dramas." -- Back cover
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.