Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara

Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198828853
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 721

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Book Description
Nobel Laureate George Bernard Shaw remains one of the world's most important and popular writers. His plays are regularly performed around the world, from the boards of Broadway and the West End to regional, community, and college stages.The three plays selected here are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre:Man and Superman: a four-act comedy for serious people, staged in part at Royal court in 1905, it is one of the early works of Modernism to take an ancient myth and restage it in contemporary mode (and its influence extends across world literature, palpable in writings from Mann to Joyce). Its storyof how a sensitive woman compels a superman-figure to adjust to her needs and those of the real world provides an updated commentary on Nietzsche's still-fashionable notions of ubermensch; and its famous third act introduces a persistent Shavian theme, which goes back as far as earliest religiousliterature-that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell.John Bull's Other Island takes up that idea: to the visionary, hell may be the ultimate modern dream of efficiency and rational administration, as manifested in a colonial Ireland run by liberal exploiters. Commissioned by WB Yeats to mark the opening of Ireland's National Theatre, the Abbey, theplay was promptly refused by its Directors (who disliked its mechanical mockeries of mechanism but may have missed its visionary qualities). It was performed to huge acclaim in London in November 1904 and it made Shaw famous, the supreme example of the Playwright as Thinker and, ever afterwards,one of the most valued commentators on Anglo-Irish relations.Major Barbara: a three-act drama which in classic Shavian style unmasks the motivation of puritan idealists and dedicated industrialists, this work (like the previous two) pits a strong woman against a sardonic, practical man. Having exposed the mendacity of apostles of efficiency, Shaw seems thento submit to their doctrine, arguing that a pure private charity towards the destitute is no adequate substitute. Like the previous two works, this is a problem play, in the course of which the audience sympathy is aroused and then repelled in all directions. The suggestion that it may be acceptableto take money from tainted sources, such as arms manufacturers, caused much debate in 1905 - and even more after the carnage wrought by mechanized guns in World War One.

Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara

Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, and Major Barbara PDF Author: George Bernard Shaw
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198828853
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 721

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nobel Laureate George Bernard Shaw remains one of the world's most important and popular writers. His plays are regularly performed around the world, from the boards of Broadway and the West End to regional, community, and college stages.The three plays selected here are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre:Man and Superman: a four-act comedy for serious people, staged in part at Royal court in 1905, it is one of the early works of Modernism to take an ancient myth and restage it in contemporary mode (and its influence extends across world literature, palpable in writings from Mann to Joyce). Its storyof how a sensitive woman compels a superman-figure to adjust to her needs and those of the real world provides an updated commentary on Nietzsche's still-fashionable notions of ubermensch; and its famous third act introduces a persistent Shavian theme, which goes back as far as earliest religiousliterature-that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell.John Bull's Other Island takes up that idea: to the visionary, hell may be the ultimate modern dream of efficiency and rational administration, as manifested in a colonial Ireland run by liberal exploiters. Commissioned by WB Yeats to mark the opening of Ireland's National Theatre, the Abbey, theplay was promptly refused by its Directors (who disliked its mechanical mockeries of mechanism but may have missed its visionary qualities). It was performed to huge acclaim in London in November 1904 and it made Shaw famous, the supreme example of the Playwright as Thinker and, ever afterwards,one of the most valued commentators on Anglo-Irish relations.Major Barbara: a three-act drama which in classic Shavian style unmasks the motivation of puritan idealists and dedicated industrialists, this work (like the previous two) pits a strong woman against a sardonic, practical man. Having exposed the mendacity of apostles of efficiency, Shaw seems thento submit to their doctrine, arguing that a pure private charity towards the destitute is no adequate substitute. Like the previous two works, this is a problem play, in the course of which the audience sympathy is aroused and then repelled in all directions. The suggestion that it may be acceptableto take money from tainted sources, such as arms manufacturers, caused much debate in 1905 - and even more after the carnage wrought by mechanized guns in World War One.

Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society

Constructions of 'the Jew' in English Literature and Society PDF Author: Bryan Cheyette
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521558778
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Combining cultural theory, discourse analysis and new historicism with readings of the works of major contemporary authors, this study concludes that "the Jew" is characterized unstereotypically as the embodiment of uncertainty within English literature and society.

The Genius of George Bernard Shaw

The Genius of George Bernard Shaw PDF Author: Samiran Kumar Paul
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1649516460
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
The Genius of George Bernard Shaw is a criticism of George Bernard Shaw’s work that explores his art, aesthetics, philosophy, and revolutionary ideas. Shaw wrote his plays raising and dealing with the problems of individuals, families, society, nations, and the world. It is occasionally stated that Shaw’s support for totalitarianism grew out of his frustration with nineteenth-century liberalism, which ineffectually culminated in a disastrous world war. Yet, close analysis to two of Shaw’s Major Critical Essays from the 1890s shows that even then Shaw expressed a desire for a ruthless man of action unencumbered by the burden of conscience to come on the scene and establish a new world order, to initiate the utopian epoch. Indeed, further analysis of a number of plays from before the war shows the impulse to be persistent and undeniable. Shaw hated disorder, and he wanted to see society managed efficiently by a small caste of technocratic experts who were at the same time, in Karl Popper’s memorable phrase, utopian social engineers. He had very little confidence in the average man and woman, who could not work mentally at the same speed? as the Fabian executive committee, his ideal of what a ruling caste would look like. Shaw’s ideal society, what I am calling his utopian vision, resembles Plato’s ideal city or Comte’s Religion of Humanity more than any society that has presumably ever existed on earth. This need for absolute order and control found many means of expression in both his life and work and was intricately bound up with his longing for perfection. This book is useful for world teachers, students, and research scholars in English in schools, colleges, universities all over the world.

Reference Catalogue of Current Literature

Reference Catalogue of Current Literature PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1264

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Book Description


Shaw and Other Playwrights

Shaw and Other Playwrights PDF Author: John Anthony Bertolini
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271009087
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The early conclusion that Shaw was mainly a magpie following the trails of many thinkers has led to the further consequence of neglecting Shaw's relationship to other playwrights. This volume of SHAW explores Shaw's plays as inheritances and inspirations of dramatic art and also locates Shaw himself as a presence in the work of his contemporaries and successors. The volume concentrates on Shaw in relation to other modern British playwrights, notably Wilde, Bennett, Rattigan, the Court Theatre playwrights, and Shaw's successors from Coward to Stoppard. Gwyn Thomas's 1975 BBC play, The Ghost of Adelphi Terrace, puts Shaw and Barrie together on stage, and Shaw's 20 June 1937 Sunday Graphic obituary tribute to Barrie demonstrates Shaw's high regard for his contemporary and near neighbor. There are also essays on how Shaw came increasingly to resemble Strindberg as a dramatist, on the requirements of acting and directing Shaw alongside his contemporaries at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, and on Heartbreak House as a complex dialogue with Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Strindberg. John R. Pfeiffer has prepared a special bibliography of sources relating to Shaw and other playwrights in addition to the Continuing Checklist of Shaviana, and Dan H. Laurence has provided Shaw's pronunciation guide for the more troublesome names of his stage characters. There are also reviews of four recent additions to Shavian scholarship. Contributors include John A. Bertolini, Fred D. Crawford, R. F. Dietrich, T. F. Evans, A. M. Gibbs, Leon H. Hugo, Christopher Newton, Sally Peters, John R. Pfeiffer, Evert Sprinchorn, and Stanley Weintraub.

Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism

Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism PDF Author: M. Yde
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137330201
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
This book reveals the genuity of Shaw's totalitarianism by looking at his material - articles, speeches, letters, etc but is especially concerned with analyzing the utopian desire that runs through so many of Shaw's plays; looking at his political and eugenic utopianism as expressed in his drama and comparing this to his political totalitarianism.

Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions

Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions PDF Author: Susan Cannon Harris
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474424473
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The first modern Irish playwrights emerged in London in the 1890s, at the intersection of a rising international socialist movement and a new campaign for gender equality and sexual freedom. Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions shows how Irish playwrights mediated between the sexual and the socialist revolutions, and traces their impact on left theatre in Europe and America from the 1890s to the 1960s. Drawing on original archival research, the study reconstructs the engagement of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, Synge, O'Casey, and Beckett with socialists and sexual radicals like Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Florence Farr, Bertolt Brecht, and Lorraine Hansberry.

Eve's Second Husband

Eve's Second Husband PDF Author: Corra Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description


Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art

Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 876

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Book Description


The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations

The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations PDF Author: Connie Robertson
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
ISBN: 9781853264894
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
Quotations have exercised a particular fascination for humanity since the birth of recorded language and their potency in the age of the soundbite is stronger than ever. We revel in quotations, compete to know them, love them, hate them and inscribe them in books and on buildings, and this freshly revised and updated dictionary includes a wealth of new material among its 13,000 familiar, serious, outrageous, witty and thought-provoking entries.The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations is an essential work of reference for every writer, journalist and speech-maker, as well as being a treasure-trove for the browser and the simply curious. From the Roman poet Ovid's observation that 'Judgement of beauty can er, what with the wine and the dark' to Oscar Wilde's that 'Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes', there is a wide diversity of sayings to add spice to our conversation and enrich our daily lives. The book is alphabetically arranged by author and indexed by keyword for ease of use.