Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama - by David Palmer Paperback

Book Synopsis

This volume responds to a renewed focus on tragedy in theatre and literary studies to explore conceptions of tragedy in the dramatic work of seventeen canonical American playwrights. For students of American literature and theatre studies, the assembled essays offer a clear framework for exploring the work of many of the most studied and performed playwrights of the modern era. Following a contextual introduction that offers a survey of conceptions of tragedy, scholars examine the dramatic work of major playwrights in chronological succession, beginning with Eugene O'Neill and ending with Suzan-Lori Parks. A final chapter provides a study of American drama since 1990 and its ongoing engagement with concepts of tragedy.

The chapters explore whether there is a distinctively American vision of tragedy developed in the major works of canonical American dramatists and how this may be seen to evolve over the course of the twentieth century through to the present day. Among the playwrights whose work is examined are: Susan Glaspell, Langston Hughes, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, August Wilson, Marsha Norman and Tony Kushner. With each chapter being short enough to be assigned for weekly classes in survey courses, the volume will help to facilitate critical engagement with the dramatic work and offer readers the tools to further their independent study of this enduring theme of dramatic literature.

Review Quotes

Visions of Tragedy features an impressive range of insightful essays on major
American dramatists from O'Neill to Suzan-Lori Parks several of which are focused
on the tragic implications of the American Dream.

Analyzing key works by the most significant American playwrights post-Eugene
O'Neill, the eighteen essays contained in Visions of Tragedy in Modern American
Drama provide important insights into how the ancient concept of tragedy takes form
in specifically American contexts. The authors productively explore how these
playwrights have situated the American Dream and probed the particularly U.S.
dynamics of race and class, while at the same time delving deeply into questions of
human suffering, fate, hubris, and complicity. In this way, the volume offers valuable
new readings of fundamental plays from the American dramatic canon, while also
proposing evocative new understandings of tragedy. This is a critical anthology that
certainly will benefit and inform students and scholars of American drama.

Tragedy has always been a hard sell in America. Ours is a nation that, as scholar Christopher Bigsby states in David Palmer's superlative anthology Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama, "was not a natural home for the tragic spirit, having been wed since its beginnings to a melioristic ideal.? Nevertheless, Eugene O'Neill, the playwright heralded for transporting tragedy to the forefront of America's dramatic imagination, insisted that "truth, in theatre as in life, is eternally difficult just as the easy is the everlasting lie.? Tragedy, O'Neill argued, was hard-earned by audiences bold enough to look deeply and critically at themselves and their society, and this was what made it worthwhile. Visions of Tragedy covers many hard "truths? about America and its inhabitants, as unleashed by the nation's greatest tragedians from O'Neill to our own time. Each of the essayists-an all-star cast in American drama studies-presents their argument in vibrant prose and with expert critical insight, never getting bogged down in academic jargon or doublespeak. Visions of Tragedy is destined to be a classic of American drama studies, clarifying and amplifying the diverse scope of tragic visions that have, for over a century, unflinchingly interrogated our shared national inheritance.
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About the Author

David Palmer taught philosophy and literature at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, USA. His interest in ethics, philosophy of mind, and theories of the self led him to explore the plays of Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O'Neill. He is the president of the Arthur Miller Society and a board member of the Eugene O'Neill Society.