Edward Albee and Absurdism

Edward Albee and Absurdism PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004324968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In Edward Albee and Absurdism, Michael Y. Bennett has assembled an outstanding team of Edward Albee scholars to address Albee’s affiliation with Martin Esslin’s label, “Theatre of the Absurd,” examining whether or not this label is appropriate.

Edward Albee and Absurdism

Edward Albee and Absurdism PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004324968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In Edward Albee and Absurdism, Michael Y. Bennett has assembled an outstanding team of Edward Albee scholars to address Albee’s affiliation with Martin Esslin’s label, “Theatre of the Absurd,” examining whether or not this label is appropriate.

Edward Albee : The Absurdist Perspective In His Plays

Edward Albee : The Absurdist Perspective In His Plays PDF Author: B. D. Pandey
Publisher: Bhartiya Sahitya Inc.
ISBN: 1613015925
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Edward Albee (b. 1928) is recognized as one of the major American dramatists of our time. He is considered the most powerful and controversial writer of America after the eras of O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Critical assessments of his work as a playwright vary from passionate applause to downright denigration. He has occasioned critical responses proving himself an enigma for critics, scholars and reviewers who have failed to reach a consensus on him as a playwright. Robert Brustein, one of America’s leading theatrical observers, displayed an arbitrary mentality of astounding presumptuousness in a review of The Zoo Story printed in Seasons of Discontent (1966) and hinted at a ‘masochistic-homosexual perfume’ in it. Similarly, in approaching The American Dream and Death of Bessie Smith, he adopted a dismissive attitude and felt only the slightest obligation to discuss the plays, preferring to attack the general decadence of American theatre. Martin Esslin precipitated a host of articles in which Albee was alternately praised and denounced for his success or failure. Philip Roth assailed him for writing ‘thinly-veiled homosexual fantasies’. Richard Schechner’s violent denunciation is based on the ‘morbidity and sexual perversity’ in Albee’s first three-act play. He dismissed the playwright as a ‘plague in our midst’ and a ‘corrosive influence on our theatre’. Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? invited the adverse remark as “a filthy play.” There are other critics as Gerald Weals, Brian Way, Rose A. Zimbardo, Gilbert Debusscher, Alan Schneider, Harold Clurman, Diana Trilling, Michael E. Rutenberg, Anne Paolucci, C.W.E. Bigsby, Richard E. Amacher etc., who have approached the plays of Edward Albee and expressed their views in favour of or against , them. To record all that has been said on Albee and his plays, or to give a survey of the critical material on Albee, the dramatist, is not possible in the limited space at my disposal here. Further, the present study is not intended to establish the reputation of Albee. Its direct and main drive is to analyze and expose the Absurdist themes which form the fundamentals of his significant plays.

American Dream

American Dream PDF Author: Edward Albee
Publisher: Turtleback Books
ISBN: 9781417654833
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
For use in schools and libraries only. American Dream and Zoo story: two plays

Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? PDF Author: Michael Y. Bennett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351599526
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? shocked audiences and critics alike with its assault on decorum. At base though, the play is simply a love story: an examination of a long-wedded life, filled with the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and pain that accompany the passing of many years together. While the ethos of the play is tragicomic, it is the anachronistic, melodramatic secret object—the nonexistent "son"—that upends the audience’s sense of theatrical normalcy. The mean and vulgar bile spewed among the characters hides these elements, making it feel like something entirely "new." As Michael Y. Bennett reveals, the play is the same emperor, just wearing new clothes. In short, it is straight out of the grand tradition of living room drama: Ibsen, Chekhov, Glaspell, Hellmann, O’Neill, Wilder, Miller, Williams, and Albee.

The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd

The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre and Literature of the Absurd PDF Author: Michael Y. Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316395359
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Michael Y. Bennett's accessible Introduction explains the complex, multidimensional nature of the works and writers associated with the absurd - a label placed upon a number of writers who revolted against traditional theatre and literature in both similar and widely different ways. Setting the movement in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, Bennett provides an in-depth overview of absurdism and its key figures in theatre and literature, from Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter to Tom Stoppard. Chapters reveal the movement's origins, development and present-day influence upon popular culture around the world, employing the latest research to this often challenging area of study in a balanced and authoritative approach. Essential reading for students of literature and theatre, this book provides the necessary tools to interpret and develop the study of a movement associated with some of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential cultural figures.

Edward Albee as Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator

Edward Albee as Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004394710
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Edward Albee as Theatrical and Dramatic Innovator explores this three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright’s innovations as a dramatist and theatrical artist and his contributions to the evolution of modern American drama.

The Zoo Story

The Zoo Story PDF Author: Edward Albee
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
A collection of some of Edward Albee's earliest and most acclaimed works.

Edward Albee

Edward Albee PDF Author: Phyllis T. Dircks
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786456590
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This work covers the canon of playwright Edward Albee, perhaps best known as the author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Comprehensive entries detail the plays and major characters. Other features include biographical information and insights into Albee's artistic beliefs, his understanding of the playwright's responsibility, the importance of music in drama, and the technical craft of writing plays.

The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature

The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature PDF Author: Michael Y. Bennett
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040001610
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 803

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Book Description
The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature is the first authoritative and definitive edited collection on absurdist literature. As a field-defining volume, the editor and the contributors are world leaders in this ever-exciting genre that includes some of the most important and influential writers of the twentieth century, including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Albert Camus. Ever puzzling and always refusing to be pinned down, this book does not attempt to define absurdist literature, but attempts to examine its major and minor players. As such, the field is indirectly defined by examining its constituent writers. Not only investigating the so-called “Theatre of the Absurd,” this volume wades deeply into absurdist fiction and absurdist poetry, expanding much of our previous sense of what constitutes absurdist literature. Furthermore, long overdue, approximately one-third of the book is devoted to marginalized writers: black, Latin/x, female, LGBTQ+, and non-Western voices.

Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition

Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition PDF Author: Lincoln Konkle
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
"Fresh examination of the works of Thornton Wilder emphasizing continuities in American literature from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. Sees Wilder as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor who drew from the Puritan worldview and tradition. Includes indepth readings of Shadow of a Doubt, The Trumpet Shall Sound, and others"--Provided by publisher.