Table of Contents

Preface

Overview, Acknowledgments

1. O’Neill’s American Theatre: Modernism Against Modernity

2. A Modernist in the Making: O’Neill’s Early Plays
Early works, The Glencairn plays, ‘Ile, Where the Cross is Made, Exorcism

3. Tragedy and the Post-Revolutionary Condition
The Personal Equation, The Hairy Ape, Lazarus Laughed, The Hairy Ape, Days Without End, More Stately Mansions, The Iceman Cometh

4. New Women, Male Destinies: The “Woman Plays”
Now I Ask You, The Straw, Diff’rent, Welded, “Anna Christie”, Strange Interlude, Dynamo, A Moon for the Misbegotten

5. “Souls under Skins”: Masks, Race, and the Divided American Self
The Dreamy Kid, The Emperor Jones, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, The Fountain, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, A Touch of the Poet

6. Transience and Tradition: O’Neill’s Modern Families
The Rope, Beyond the Horizon, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hughie

7. Critical and Performance Perspectives:

O’Neill’s Emperor Jones: Racing The Great White Way, by Katie N. Johnson (Miami University of Ohio, USA)

“O’Neill”: Biography, Autobiography, and Standing in for Eugene (G.) O’Neill, by William Davies King (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Tony Kushner’s O’Neill: Seeking Meaning on Marblehead Neck, by Sheila Hickey Garvey (Southern Connecticut State University, USA)

The Literary O’Neill, by Alexander Pettit (University of North Texas, USA)

8. O’Neill After O’Neill

Chronology
Endnotes
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index

Promotional Information

This Critical Companion provides a detailed study of the plays of the Nobel Prize-winning dramatist and situates O'Neill's modernism as a distinctive expression of American culture and stage traditions.

About the Author

Kurt Eisen is professor of English and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tennessee Tech University, USA, where he teaches courses in world literature and drama. He is the author of The Inner Strength of Opposites: O’Neill’s Novelistic Drama and the Melodramatic Imagination (1994), and his work has appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill, and a variety of journals. He was a fellow of the National Critics Institute in 2001 and is a past president of the Eugene O’Neill Society.

Reviews

This addition to the "Critical Companions" series provides a comprehensive examination of Eugene O’Neill’s contributions as a dramatist and his critical role in establishing America’s modern theater … Eisen (Tennessee Tech Univ.) tracks historic and subtle contributions of producers, artists, scholars, political events, and the press, detailing O’Neill’s immense literary landscape and influence on Broadway and playwrights who came after him. Filled with insightful revelations from the historical perspective to present-day reflections, this study is certain to contribute to future critical debate. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
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