Mimetic Disillusion: Eugene O'Neill, Tennesse Williams and U.S.Dramatic Realism - Softcover

Fleche, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0817308385 ISBN 13: 9780817308384

Publisher: The University of Alabama Press, 1997

Synopsis

This work examines the history of US drama and how at mid-century, it turned in the direction of a poststructuralist mimicry. It explores the complexities of mimetic and realistic readings and develops connections to the writings of Derrida, De Man, Foucault, Brecht and Benjamin.

About this title

Review

"Anne Fleche imaginatively broadens and enriches the critical debate on dramatic theory, but, more significantly, she restores O'Neill and Williams to a central role within it. Readings of individual plays are wonderfully original and contemporary, clarified throughout by Fleche's wide-ranging knowledge of dramatic literature and, especially, by her witty, lucid prose."--Mark W. Estrin, Rhode Island College

From the Back Cover

Mimetic Disillusion reevaluates the history of modern U.S. drama in general and the dramatic art of O'Neill and Williams specifically, showing how at mid-century drama in America shifted away from representational theatre, toward a poststructuralist "disillusionment" with mimesis. The book focuses on two major writers of the 1930s and 1940s - Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams - one whose writing career was just ending and the other whose career was just beginning. In new readings of their major works of this period, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire, Fleche develops connections to the writings of Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, and Michel Foucault, among others, and discusses poststructuralism in the light of such modern writers as Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, and Walter Benjamin.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0817308385
• ISBN 13: 9780817308384
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 136