Michael Y Bennett

Eugene O’Neill’s One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives Michael Y Bennett

Marc Notes: Originally published: 2012.; Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, is widely known for his full length plays. However, his one-act plays are the foundation of his work - both thematically and stylistically, they telescope his later plays. This collection aims to fill the gap by examining these texts and the foundational period of American drama. Review Quotes: "Eugene O'Neill's One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives is an important addition to O'Neill studies, and one that is likely to contribute . . . to the playwright's 'second birth.'" - Eugene O'Neill Review"Bennett and Carson have assembled a team of outstanding scholars and produced a remarkable reexamination of the early one acts of Eugene O'Neill . . . Well written, researched, and excellent chapter endnotes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." - CHOICE "This collection of essays succeeds admirably at its editors' aims of revealing the continuity between O'Neill's early work and the great plays of his mature years and of placing his one-acts in the Modernist and Progressive Era contexts in which his work began. In the hands of long-standing O'Neill experts like Zander Brietzke, Thierry Dubost, Kurt Eisen, and Steven Bloom, as well as knowledgeable and talented younger critics, the plays receive what is in many cases their first serious scrutiny from the theoretical perspectives of sociology, economics, queer theory, epistemology, Existentialism, and formal aesthetics. These essays show they are worthy of it." - Brenda Murphy, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English, University of Connecticut and author of The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity"Bennett and Carson have assembled a remarkable range of essays on a tough and enigmatic subject. The first of its kind and long overdue, this volume recasts O'Neill's too often dismissed one-acts in crucial ways - as the preliminary 'stammerings' of O'Neill's late masterworks, yes, but also as invaluable renderings of the political, economic, and sociological realities of America's Progressive Era and the turbulent modern scene that followed closely at its heels." - Robert M. Dowling, author and editor of the two-volume Critical Companion to Eugene O'Neill (2009) and Eugene O'Neill and His Contemporaries: Bohemians, Radicals, Progressives, and the Avant Garde (2011) Biographical Note: Michael Y. Bennett is Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA. He is the author of "Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd" (2011/2013); "Words, Space, and the Audience" (2012); and "Narrating the Past through Theatre" (2012). He is the editor of "Refiguring Oscar Wilde's" Salome (2011). He is also Editor of "The Edward Albee Review." Benjamin D. Carson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Bridgewater State University, USA. He has published articles on Edith Wharton, Gerald Vizenor, Ana Castillo, and Clarence Major and is the editor Sovereignty, Separatism, and Survivance: Ideological Encounters in the Literature of Native North America. Table of Contents: Essay Abstracts -- Introduction -- 1. The Playwright's Theatre: O'Neill's Use of the Provincetown Players as a One-Act Laboratory / Jeff Kennedy -- 2. Rethinking O'Neill's Beginnings: Slumming, Sociology, and Sensationalism in The Web / J. Chris Westgate -- 3. Eugene O'Neill's Abortion and Standard Family Roles: The Economics of Terminating a Romance and a Pregnancy / Lasley Broder -- 4. The Movie Man: The Failure of Aesthetics? / Thierry Dubost -- 5. God Stiffen Us: Queering O'Neill's Sea Plays / Phillip Barnhart -- 6. Epistemological Crises in O'Neill's SS Glencairn Plays / Michael Y. Bennett -- 7. The Curtain Is Lowered: Self-Revelation and the Problem of Form in Exorcism / Kurt Eisen -- 8. Ain't Nothin' Dere but de Trees!: Ghosts and the Forest in The Emperor Jones / Paul D. Streufert -- 9. Neither Fallen Angel nor Risen Ape: Desentimentalizing Robert Smith / Thomas F. Connolly -- 10. Waiting for O'Neill: The Makings of an Existentialist / Steven F. Bloom -- 11. O'Neill's Hughie: The Sea Plays Revisited / Robert Combs -- 12. Condensed Comedy: The Neo-Futurists Perform O'Neill's Stage Directions / Zander Brietzke -- Notes on the Authors -- Index. Review Citations:

Choice 03/01/2013 (EAN 9780230339811, Hardcover)