First World War Plays: Night Watches, Mine Eyes Have Seen, Tunnel Trench, Post Mortem, Oh What A Lovely War, The Accrington Pals, Sea and Land and Sky - Softcover

Mark Rawlinson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472529898 ISBN 13: 9781472529893

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2014

Synopsis

The First World War (1914 1918) marked a turning point in modern history and culture and its literary legacy is vast: poetry, fiction and memoirs abound. But the drama of the period is rarely recognised, with only a handful of plays commonly associated with the war.

First World War Plays draws together canonical and lesser-known plays from the First World War to the end of the twentieth century, tracing the ways in which dramatists have engaged with and resisted World War I in their works. Spanning almost a century of conflict, this anthology explores the changing cultural attitudes to warfare, including the significance of the war over time, interwar pacifism, and historical revisionism. The collection includes writing by combatants, as well as playwrights addressing historical events and national memory, by both men and women, and by writers from Great Britain and the United States.

Plays from the period, like Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse (1916), Mine Eyes Have Seen by Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1918) and Tunnel Trench by Hubert Griffith (1924), are joined with reflections on the war in Post Mortem by Noël Coward (1930, performed 1944) and Oh What A Lovely War by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop (1963) as well as later works The Accrington Pals by Peter Whelan (1982) and Sea and Land and Sky by Abigail Docherty (2010).

Accompanied by a general introduction by editor, Dr Mark Rawlinson.

About this title

Product Description

From Night Watches by Allan Monkhouse, published in 1916, to Abigail Docherty's Sea and Land and Sky (2010), this collection of seven plays shows how the war has been represented through the 'traditions, forms and economies of the theatre' over the last century. The other works are Alice Dunbar-Nelson's Mine Eyes Have Seen (1918); Tunnel Trench (1924) by Hubert Griffith; Noël Coward's Post Mortem (1930); Oh What a Lovely War! (1963) by Theatre Workshop; and The Accrington Pals (1981) by Peter Whelan.

About the Author

Dr Mark Rawlinson is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Leicester. His research has a particular focus on the literature of war. British Writing of the Second World War (2000) was a study of the literary culture of wartime Britain (1939-1945). He has written a book-length study of Pat Barker s fiction, focusing on her representation of the Great War, and was co-editor, with Adam Piette, of The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth Century British and American War Literature (2012).

About this edition

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1472529898
• ISBN 13: 9781472529893
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 472