Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle

Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle PDF Author: Doris Alexander
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271041021
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
In Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle, Doris Alexander gives us a new kind of inside biography that begins where the others leave off. It follows O'Neill through the door into his writing room to give a blow-by-blow account of how he fought out in his plays his great life battles&—love against hate, doubt against belief, life against death&—to an ever-expanding understanding. It presents a new kind of criticism, showing how O'Neill's most intimate struggles worked their way to resolution through the drama of his plays. Alexander reveals that he was engineering his own consciousness through his plays and solving his life problems&—while the tone, imagery, and richness of the plays all came out of the nexus of memories summoned up by the urgency of the problems he faced in them. By the way of O'Neill, this study moves toward a theory of the impulse that sets off a writer's creativity, and a theory of how that impulse acts to shape a work, not only in a dramatist like O'Neill but also in the case of writers in other mediums, and even of painters and composers. The study begins with Desire Under the Elms because that play's plot was consolidated by a dream that opened up the transfixing grief that precipitated the play for O'Neill, and it ends with Days Without End when he had resolved his major emotional-philosophical struggle and created within himself the voice of his final great plays. Since the analysis brings to bear on the plays all of his conscious decisions, ideas, theories, as well as the life-and-death struggles motivating them, documenting even the final creative changes made during rehearsals, this book provides a definitive account of the nine plays analyzed in detail (Desire Under the Elms, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed, Strange Interlude, Dynamo, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, and Days Without End, with additional analysis of plays written before and after.

Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle

Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle PDF Author: Doris Alexander
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271041021
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
In Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle, Doris Alexander gives us a new kind of inside biography that begins where the others leave off. It follows O'Neill through the door into his writing room to give a blow-by-blow account of how he fought out in his plays his great life battles&—love against hate, doubt against belief, life against death&—to an ever-expanding understanding. It presents a new kind of criticism, showing how O'Neill's most intimate struggles worked their way to resolution through the drama of his plays. Alexander reveals that he was engineering his own consciousness through his plays and solving his life problems&—while the tone, imagery, and richness of the plays all came out of the nexus of memories summoned up by the urgency of the problems he faced in them. By the way of O'Neill, this study moves toward a theory of the impulse that sets off a writer's creativity, and a theory of how that impulse acts to shape a work, not only in a dramatist like O'Neill but also in the case of writers in other mediums, and even of painters and composers. The study begins with Desire Under the Elms because that play's plot was consolidated by a dream that opened up the transfixing grief that precipitated the play for O'Neill, and it ends with Days Without End when he had resolved his major emotional-philosophical struggle and created within himself the voice of his final great plays. Since the analysis brings to bear on the plays all of his conscious decisions, ideas, theories, as well as the life-and-death struggles motivating them, documenting even the final creative changes made during rehearsals, this book provides a definitive account of the nine plays analyzed in detail (Desire Under the Elms, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed, Strange Interlude, Dynamo, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, and Days Without End, with additional analysis of plays written before and after.

Hughie

Hughie PDF Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
ISBN: 9780822205432
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
THE STORY: Originally produced on Broadway, revived to sellout houses in 1996 starring Al Pacino, HUGHIE was one of O'Neill's last works. It was originally intended as part of a series of short plays, but it became the lone survivor when O'Neill de

Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays

Eugene O'Neill's Last Plays PDF Author: Doris Alexander
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820327099
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This study draws on research concerning the lives of Eugene O'Neill, his family and his circle. It corrects and expands the biographical record on him and distinguishes the man and his life from the creations that were inspired by, and drew on, that life. Included are his attempted suicide, his tuberculosis, and his relationship with his parents.

Eugene O'Neill's Philosophy of Difficult Theatre

Eugene O'Neill's Philosophy of Difficult Theatre PDF Author: Jeremy Killian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000546136
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Through a close re-examination of Eugene O’Neill’s oeuvre, from minor plays to his Pulitzer-winning works, this study proposes that O’Neill’s vision of tragedy privileges a particular emotional response over a more “rational” one among his audience members. In addition to offering a new paradigm through which to interpret O’Neill’s work, this book argues that O’Neill’s theory of tragedy is a robust account of the value of difficult theatre as a whole, with more explanatory scope and power than its cognitivist counterparts. This paradigm reshapes our understanding of live theatrical tragedy’s impact and significance for our lives. The book enters the discussion of tragic value by way of the plays of Eugene O’Neill, and through this study, Killian makes the case that O’Neill has refused to allow Plato to define the terms of tragedy’s merit, as the cognitivists have. He argues that O’Neill’s theory of tragedy is non-cognitive and locates the value of a play in its ability to trigger certain emotional responses from the audience. This would be of great interest to students and scholars of performance studies, literature and philosophy.

Complete Plays: 1913-1920

Complete Plays: 1913-1920 PDF Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 1180

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Book Description
A wire for Live, the Web, thirst, recklessness, warnings, fog, bread and butter, Bound East for Cardiff, aAbortion, the movie man, servitude, the sniper, the personal eqauation, before breakfast, now I ask you, in the zone, ile, the long voyage home, the moon of the caribbees, the robe, beyond the horizon, shell shock, the dreamy kid, where the cross is made, the straw, Chris Christophersen, gold, anna Christie, and the Emperor Jones.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day's Journey Into Night PDF Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300190182
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
divEugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play Long Day’s Journey into Night is regarded as his masterpiece and a classic of American drama. With this new edition, at last it has the critical edition that it deserves. William Davies King provides students and theater artists with an invaluable guide to the text, including an essay on historical and critical perspectives; glosses of literary allusions and quotations; notes on the performance history; an annotated bibliography; and illustrations. "This is a worthy new edition, one that I'm sure will appeal to many students and teachers. William Davies King provides a thoughtful introduction to Long Day's Journey into Night—equally sensitive to the most particular and most encompassing of the play's materials."—Marc Robinson/DIV

By Women Possessed

By Women Possessed PDF Author: Arthur Gelb
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399159118
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 922

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Book Description
Celebrated for their books on Eugene O’Neill and enjoying access to a trove of previously sealed archival material, the Gelbs deliver their final volume on the stormy life and brilliant oeuvre of this Nobel Prize–winning American playwright. This is a tour through both a magical moment in American theater and the troubled life of a genius. Not a peep show or a celebrity gossip fest, this book is a brilliant investigation of the emotional knots that ensnared one of our most important playwrights. Handsome, charming when he wanted to be: O’Neill was the flame women were drawn to—all, that is, except his mother, who never let him forget he was unwanted. By Women Possessed follows O’Neill through his great successes, the failures he was able to shrug off, and the long eclipse, a twelve-year period in which, despite the Nobel, nothing he wrote was produced. But ahead lay his greatest achievements: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Both were ahead of their time and both received lukewarm receptions. It wasn’t until after his death that his widow, the keeper of the flame, began a fierce and successful campaign to restore his reputation. The result is that today, just over 125 years after his birth, O’Neill is a towering presence in the theater, his work—always in performance here and abroad—still electrifying audiences. Perhaps of equal importance, he is the acknowledged father of modern American theater, the man who paved the way for the likes of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and a host of others. But, as Williams has said, at a cost: “O’Neill gave birth to the American theater and died for it.”

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill PDF Author: Stephen A. Black
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300093995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
Stricken with guilt and grief when his father, mother and brother died in quick succession, Eugene O'Neill mourned deeply for two decades. This critical biography presents an understanding of O'Neill's life, work and slow grieving.

Plays by Eugene O'Neill

Plays by Eugene O'Neill PDF Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher: Broadway Play Publishing
ISBN: 9780881451818
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
This collection contains Eugene O'Neill's first three full-length plays: BEYOND THE HORIZON, THE EMPEROR JONES, and ANNA CHRISTIE. BEYOND THE HORIZON: Winner of the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "...an absorbing, significant, and memorable tragedy... ...a playwright of real power and imagination... ...the play has greatness in it and marks O'Neill as one of our foremost playwrights...." Alexander Woolcott, Times "Only once or twice in the course of the dramatic season does a playof such terrific force and such simple directness award the patient theatrical chroniclers..." Robert Gilbert Welsh, Evening Telegram "...this season's most notable play of a serious theme and purpose by an American author...." World THE EMPEROR JONES: "...for strength and originality [O'Neill] has no rivals among the American writers for the stage." Alexander Woolcott, Times "An odd and extraordinary play, written with imaginative genius..." Kenneth Macgowan, Globe "...the most interesting play which has yet come from the most promising playwright in America..." Heywood Broun, Tribune ANNA CHRISTIE: Winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "...a rich and salty play that grips the attention with the rise of the first curtain and holds it fiercely to the end.... A play written with that abundant imagination, that fresh and venturesome mind and that sure instinct for the theatre which set this young author apart...." Alexander Woollcott, Times

Collected Shorter Plays

Collected Shorter Plays PDF Author: Eugene O'Neill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030010779X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
O'Neill's themes and concerns find expression in his one-act plays which are the dramatic equivalent of short stories. Here are nine one-act plays that span the playwright's career.