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1

Attia, Alaa E. Mustafa Khalifa. "Capitalism and identity in modern American drama." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/3152.

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The aim of the thesis is, through the analysis of four influential American plays of the twentieth-century, to explore the relationship between capitalism and identity. The discussed plays are similar in that they focus on what might be called a 'crisis of masculinity,' with different reactions from the feminine to that crisis. They trade on the oppositions implicit in that binary: the tension between public and private, bosses and workers, breadwinners and dependents, husbands and wives, parents and children. However, these plays are not interchangeable. Indeed, part of the purpose of this thesis is to situate them within their respective historical contexts through an examination of their form: social expressionism of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine (1923), domestic realism of Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing! (1935), personal expressionism of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949), and new realism of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen- Ross (1983). The selected plays integrate with each other in order to depict the individual's vulnerability, insecurity and alienation in American corporate business. I investigate how Rice's play responds to the emerging culture of consumption in America during the 1920s. I show the way in which the play, according to Antonio Gramsci's concept of Americanism, seeks to reveal the human cost, both at work and at home, of maximum industrial efficiency under Taylorism and Fordism. The discussion of Odets's play demonstrates how mass unemployment caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s challenges the traditional structure of the nuclear family: it radically defies the conventional American ideology of self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. The practically emasculating matriarch, the eroded authority of the Marxian and idealist patriarch, who ceases to be a provider, and the disturbed masculinity of the son are tracked. Further, I explore how Miller's play reflects the concepts of other-directness and conformity after World War II. I illustrate how the notion of work dominates and affects the life of the organization man in the home that, in tum, contributes to his anxiety and delusion as well as determines the validity of his values. Finally, the consequences and the requirements of social Darwinism, which takes the form of cutthroat competitiveness to achieve the American Dream in the 1980s, are pinpointed through examining Mamet's play. I argue that the businessman's need to establish and maintain a masculine identity parallels his obsession with success: for him, having means being.
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2

Coloma, Cares Estefanía. "Survivors in modern American tragedy." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2014. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/130551.

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3

Ormianin, Maria Ascensión Jiménez Martin. "The theme of infanticide in modern American drama." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFPR, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1884/24337.

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4

Klein, Ottilie P. [Verfasser]. "Lethal Performances : Women Who Kill in Modern American Drama / Ottilie P. Klein." Frankfurt a.M. : Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2019. http://d-nb.info/1180213130/34.

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5

Sfeir, Maya. "A Comparative Analysis of Language and Gender in Selected French and American Modern Drama." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018USPCA021.

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Notre étude a pour objet d’examiner comment le genre et les relations de pouvoir et d’affinité sont construits à travers le discours dans deux pièces de théâtre françaises et deux pièces de théâtre américaines écrites durant l’époque moderne (1890-1914), Margaret Fleming (1890) de James A. Herne, He and She (1911) de Rachel Crothers, Les avariés (1902) de Eugène Brieux et La triomphatrice (1914) de Marie Lenéru. Le but de l’étude est de combler l’écart entre le champ d’étude du langage et du genre ainsi que dans le champ de l’analyse linguistique des textes de théâtre dans les mondes francophones et anglophones. Pour combler cette lacune, nous avons choisi de développer un modèle d’analyse ancré dans l’évolution récente du champ de langage et de genre tout en prenant en considération l’analyse linguistique des textes de théâtres. Le modèle joint les théories anglophones de l’analyse critique du discours ainsi que les théories de l’analyse du discours françaises et les théories d’énonciation. Notre analyse nous a démontré que dans les pièces françaises et américaines, les systèmes linguistiques français et anglais utilisent les mêmes stratégies et procès linguistiques pour représenter le genre et les relations. Nous avons également constaté que dans les textes dramatiques, le genre est situationnel, dépendant du contexte, et intersectionnel, se croisant avec d’autres catégories tels la classe, l’âge et l’ethnicité, et dans le cas des textes dramatiques, les genres dramatiques et les rôles des personnages. Nos résultats présentent de nouvelles façons d’étudier et de lire le genre dans les discours dramatiques et montrent aussi l’importance de joindre des approches multiculturelles
The purpose of this study was to investigate how gender, and power and affinity relationships areconstructed via discourse in two French and two American plays composed during the modern period (1890-1914): James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming (1890), Rachel Crothers’s He and She (1911), Eugène Brieux’sLes Avariés (1902), and Marie Lenéru’s La Triomphatrice (1914). The study sought to fill the gap between,on the one hand, research in the field of language and gender that unsystematically analyzed literary anddramatic texts, and, on the other hand, studies in the field of the linguistic analysis of drama that analyzedlanguage and gender in plays without recourse to the theoretical underpinnings in language and genderstudies. To address this gap, a three-partite model analyzing the dramatic text, the situation of enunciation,and gendered discourses was developed, building on Critical Discourse Analysis and French DiscourseAnalysis, as well as research from the fields of language and gender, and the linguistic analysis of drama. Aclose examination of gendered representations and gendered usage using the model revealed that in Frenchand American drama, similar linguistic features are mostly deployed to construct gender and relationships.Results also showed that in dramatic texts, gender is situational, depending on context, and intersectional,often intersecting with other categories like class, age, and ethnicity, and in the case of dramatic texts,dramatic genres and roles. These findings present new ways of researching and reading gender in dramaticdiscourse. They also highlight the importance of combining multi-cultural approaches to analyze gender indramatic texts
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6

Mavromatidou, Eleni. "The Role Of The (Postcolonial) Intellectual/Critic: Textualization Of History As Trauma: The African American And Modern Greek Paradigm." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1213616340.

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7

Tolle, Andrew. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Naturalist Playwright." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2012. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115172/.

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This study explores Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s use of the dramatic form to challenge Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism by offering feminist adaptations of Darwin’s theories of natural and sexual selection. As she does in her career-defining manifesto, Women & Economics (1898), Gilman in her lesser-known plays deploys her own brand of reform Darwinism to serve the feminist cause. Despite her absence in histories of modern drama, Gilman actively participated in the establishment and development of this literary, historical, and cultural movement. After situating Gilman in the context of nineteenth-century naturalist theater, this thesis examines two short dramatic dialogues she published in 1890, “The Quarrel,” and “Dame Nature Interviewed,” as well as two full-length plays, Interrupted (1909) and the Balsam Fir (1910). These plays demonstrate Gilman’s efforts to use the dramatic form in her early plays to “rehearse” for Women & Economics, and in her later drama, to “stage” the theories she presents in that book.
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8

Jouve, Émeline. "Susan Glaspell's drama of revolt." Thesis, Toulouse 2, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011TOU20116.

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9

Mcnabb, Cameron Hunt. ""Bite on Boldly": Staging Medieval and Early Modern Heretics." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4156.

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My dissertation explores the parodic Biblical language employed by medieval and early modern staged heretics. The plays' coupling of parody and heresy forges ideological connections between the two, as when they disrupt authorized, orthodox models of the Word, as both the Scriptures and the Host. My Introduction addresses the theological controversies over the relationship between language and meaning that arise from Lollard, Catholic, and Protestant heresies. Chapter two analyzes how, in the Chester cycle, Antichrist's theological and verbal dissents are eerily similar to orthodox models. That framework forces the audience to depend on the context of the heretic's words and deeds, rather than the words and deeds themselves, to interpret meaning. Chapter three examines Mankind's construction of orthodox and parodic registers of language and its mapping of Mankind's fall and ascent through his transition from one register to the other. Chapter four addresses how the Croxton Play of the Sacrament defends the doctrine of the Real Presence by aligning the transformative power of the consecratory words with the transformative power of believers' confessions at conversion, wherein both enact a transubstantiation. Chapter five argues that John Bale's Three Laws relies on the dichotomy of the letter and the spirit to characterize his parodic Catholic vices as legalistic adherents to the Word and his Protestant heroes as spiritually-enlightened believers. Chapter six analyzes how Falstaff's Puritan parody, in the Henry IV plays, locates meaning in the audience rather than the speaker, particularly through dramatic irony, equivocation, and allusions. Lastly, chapter seven examines how, in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the spectrum of orthodox and parodic language use collapses into Faustus's idiom, and I contend that Faustus's heresy is ultimately his indecision. My conclusion ultimately finds that the univocity between language and meaning is a specious construction, and, collectively, these texts demonstrate that language may be a marker but not a maker of meaning.
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10

Weiss, Katherine. "“Samuel Beckett and History,” “Samuel Beckett and the Art of Failure,” and “Modern American Drama and the Greeks”." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/5596.

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11

Gorney, Allen. "TRULY AN AWESOME SPECTACLE": GENDER PERFORMATIVITY AND THE ALIENATION EFFECT IN ANGELS IN AMERICA." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2005. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/2284.

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Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America uses stereotypical depictions of gay men to deconstruct traditional gender dichotomies. In this thesis, I argue that Kushner has created a continuum of gender performativity to deconstruct these traditional gender dichotomies, thereby empowering the effeminate and disempowering the masculine. I closely examine Kushner's use of Brechtian and Aristotelian tenets in the first Broadway production of the play to demonstrate that Kushner sought to induce social awareness of gay male oppression, contingent on the audience's perception of Kushner's deconstruction of the traditional gender dichotomy. I also scrutinize the role of the closet and its implications in the play, primarily analyzed with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theoretical framework, suggesting Kushner's partiality to openly gay men who can actively participate in the cessation of gay male oppression.
M.A.
Department of English
Arts and Sciences
English
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12

Gagnon, Donald P. "Pipe Dreams and Primitivism: Eugene O'Neill and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity." [Tampa, Fla.] : University of South Florida, 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/SFE0000122.

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13

Streeter, Joshua Aaron. "Greek Tragedy and Its American Choruses in Open Air Theaters from 1991 to 2014: The Cases of Gorilla Theatre Productions and The Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon." The Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu155534000939454.

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14

Lowden, Messerschmidt Tiffany. "From maiden to whore and back again : a survey of prostitution in the works of William Shakespeare." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2009. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0002886.

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15

Leite, André Luiz [UNESP]. "O zoológico existencialista de Edward Albee." Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/91594.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-04-26Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:26:25Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 leite_al_me_arafcl.pdf: 864986 bytes, checksum: 0067c970ef9b685707a6e900dd9a6ce9 (MD5)
A obra de arte dramática, diferentemente de outras formas artístico-literárias, é a que de forma mais prática e imediata estabelece uma relação entre seu realizador e o público ao qual ela é destinada. Contudo, o drama moderno, produzido a partir do final do século XIX, passou por uma série de crises e adaptações quanto à forma e ao conteúdo, decorrentes de várias mudanças ocorridas nos mais diversos setores da sociedade. Edward Albee é um dos maiores dramaturgos norte-americanos da segunda metade do séc. XX. Seguindo uma tradição que produziria grandes talentos como Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams e Arthur Miller, o novo autor surge em 1958 com seu texto, The Zoo Story, associado ao Teatro do Absurdo. A peça de forma minimalista põe em cena dois bancos de praça e duas personagens: Peter que é a própria personificação do self made man, já que está enjaulado aos ideais e aos valores burgueses de vida, e Jerry o outsider ou o transeunte permanente que não se insere nos padrões, no código moral e de valores socialmente estabelecidos. Entretanto, ou por isso mesmo, possui uma capacidade reflexiva extremamente aguçada. O objetivo é tratar de um aspecto da peça - a questão da absurvidade e da liberdade, como formas de transcender a angústia existencial e a vida sem significado em um contexto destituído de símbolos metafísicos. Analisar-se-ão os elementos relacionados a estes tópicos bem como o modo que servem de instrumento para o esvaziamento da ideologia burguesa, que culmina na crítica ácida que Edward Albee desfere ao American way of life.
Dramatic art, differently from other literacy-artistic forms, is the one that most practically and immediately establishes a relationship between its producer and the audience it is created for. However, modern drama, produced since the end of nineteenth century, has gone through many crises and adaptations in its form and content, originated from many changes occured in the various instances of society. Edward Albee is one of the major American playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century. Following a tradition which produced gifted authors such as Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, the new author appears with his play The Zoo Story in 1958, associated to the Theater of the Absurd. The play, in a minimalist way, stages two park benches and two characters: Peter, the personification of the self made man, encaged in the bourgeois ideals and values of life; and Jerry, the outsider or the permanent transient who does not fill in the patterns, in the moral code or the established social values. However, or because of this, he has a sharpened reflexive ability. The aim of our search is to treat one aspect of the play - absurdity and freedom - a means of transceding existential anguish and life without meaning in a context deprived of metaphysical symbols. We intend to analyze elements related to these topics, as well as the way they function as instruments for the emptying bourgeois ideology which, ends up the sour criticism Albee aims at the American way of life.
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16

Leite, André Luiz. "O zoológico existencialista de Edward Albee /." Araraquara : [s.n.], 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/11449/91594.

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Orientador: Alcides Cardoso dos Santos
Banca: Iná Camargo Costa
Banca: Maria Clara Bonetti Paro
Resumo: A obra de arte dramática, diferentemente de outras formas artístico-literárias, é a que de forma mais prática e imediata estabelece uma relação entre seu realizador e o público ao qual ela é destinada. Contudo, o drama moderno, produzido a partir do final do século XIX, passou por uma série de crises e adaptações quanto à forma e ao conteúdo, decorrentes de várias mudanças ocorridas nos mais diversos setores da sociedade. Edward Albee é um dos maiores dramaturgos norte-americanos da segunda metade do séc. XX. Seguindo uma tradição que produziria grandes talentos como Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams e Arthur Miller, o novo autor surge em 1958 com seu texto, The Zoo Story, associado ao Teatro do Absurdo. A peça de forma minimalista põe em cena dois bancos de praça e duas personagens: Peter que é a própria personificação do self made man, já que está enjaulado aos ideais e aos valores burgueses de vida, e Jerry o outsider ou o transeunte permanente que não se insere nos padrões, no código moral e de valores socialmente estabelecidos. Entretanto, ou por isso mesmo, possui uma capacidade reflexiva extremamente aguçada. O objetivo é tratar de um aspecto da peça - a questão da absurvidade e da liberdade, como formas de transcender a angústia existencial e a vida sem significado em um contexto destituído de símbolos metafísicos. Analisar-se-ão os elementos relacionados a estes tópicos bem como o modo que servem de instrumento para o esvaziamento da ideologia burguesa, que culmina na crítica ácida que Edward Albee desfere ao American way of life.
Abstract: Dramatic art, differently from other literacy-artistic forms, is the one that most practically and immediately establishes a relationship between its producer and the audience it is created for. However, modern drama, produced since the end of nineteenth century, has gone through many crises and adaptations in its form and content, originated from many changes occured in the various instances of society. Edward Albee is one of the major American playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century. Following a tradition which produced gifted authors such as Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, the new author appears with his play The Zoo Story in 1958, associated to the Theater of the Absurd. The play, in a minimalist way, stages two park benches and two characters: Peter, the personification of the self made man, encaged in the bourgeois ideals and values of life; and Jerry, the outsider or the permanent transient who does not fill in the patterns, in the moral code or the established social values. However, or because of this, he has a sharpened reflexive ability. The aim of our search is to treat one aspect of the play - absurdity and freedom - a means of transceding existential anguish and life without meaning in a context deprived of metaphysical symbols. We intend to analyze elements related to these topics, as well as the way they function as instruments for the emptying bourgeois ideology which, ends up the sour criticism Albee aims at the American way of life.
Mestre
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17

Namaste, Nina Bosch. "From the national to the individual forging identities through the use of culinary imagery in representative twentieth-century Hispanic dramas /." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3167280.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2005.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 3, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-03, Section: A, page: 0828. Chair: Catherine Larson.
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18

Lopes, Tatiana de Castro. "Mentira sexual em M. Butterfly de David Henry Hwang." Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2007. http://www.bdtd.uerj.br/tde_busca/arquivo.php?codArquivo=465.

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O objetivo desta dissertação é questionar a legitimidade de convicções sexuais e de gênero profundamente arraigadas, através da análise de M. Butterfly de David Henry Hwang e Cat on a Hot Tin Roof de Tennessee Williams. Argüindo a respeito do determinismo biológico imposto e do sistema binário restritivo, eu tento testar o valor e o significado de antigos dualismos construídos, tais como mentira e verdade, masculino e feminino. Nesta tarefa, sou auxiliada pela existência de personagens enriquecedores como Brick Pollitt, Maggie, René Gallimard e Song Liling, cujas subjetividades são centrais para minha dissertação. Enquanto os dois primeiros são cruciais para a discussão sobre a mentira, os outros são fundamentais para exemplificar as possibilidades de sexualidades e expressões de gênero transgressoras
The purpose of this thesis is to question the legitimacy of deeply rooted sexual and gender beliefs through the analysis of both David Hwangs M. Butterfly and Tennessee Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Being inquisitive regarding the imposed biological determinism and the restrictive binary system, I try to test the value and the meaning of ancient constructed dualisms such as mendacity and truth, masculine and feminine. In this ask, I am supported by the existence of enriching characters like Brick Pollitt, Maggie, Rene Gallimard and Song Liling, whose subjectivities are the core of my thesis. While the two first are crucial for the discussion on mendacity, the others are fundamental to exemplify possibilities of transgressive sexualities and gender expressions.
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19

Valenti, Eva. "La Sociolinguistique Postcoloniale en Amérique Hispanophone et en Afrique Francophone : Un Drame Linguistique en Deux Actes." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/57.

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This thesis analyzes the sociolinguistic situations in postcolonial Latin America and francophone North Africa (the Maghreb) through a comparative lens. Specifically, it examines the ways in which Spain and France’s differing colonial agendas and language ideologies affected the relationships between colonizer and colonized, and, by extension, the role that Spanish and French play(ed) in these regions after decolonization. Finally, it explores how Spain and France’s contemporary discourses frame colonial participation in the two languages’ development, and the psychological effects these ideologies have had on the formerly colonized.
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20

Madison, Emily. "Stages of Emotion: Shakespeare, Performance, and Affect in Modern Anglo-American Film and Theatre." Thesis, 2020. https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-gndv-n045.

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This dissertation makes a case for the Shakespearean stage in the modern Anglo-American tradition as a distinctive laboratory for producing and navigating theories of emotion. The dissertation brings together Shakespeare performance studies and the newer fields of the history of emotions and cultural emotion studies, arguing that Shakespeare’s enduring status as the playwright of human emotion makes the plays in performance critical sites of discourse about human emotion. More specifically, the dissertation charts how, since the late nineteenth century, Shakespeare performance has been implicated in an effort to understand emotion as it defines and relates to the “human” subject. The advent of scientific materialism and Darwinism involved a dethroning of emotion and its expression as a specially endowed human faculty, best evidenced by Charles Darwin’s 1871 The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. Shakespeare’s poetic, formal expression of the passions was seen as proof of this faculty, and nowhere better exemplified than in the tragedies and in the passionate displays of the great tragic heroes. The controversy surrounding the tragic roles of the famous Victorian actor-manager Henry Irving illustrates how the embodied, human medium of the Shakespearean stage served as valuable leverage in contemporary debates about emotion. The dissertation then considers major Shakespearean figures of the twentieth century, including Harley Granville Barker, Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier, and Peter Brook, whose “stages” similarly galvanize and reflect contestation and change in what William Reddy has called “emotional regimes” or Barbara Rosenwein “emotional communities.” For each of these figures, a specific emotional paradigm is at stake in staging Shakespeare and particularly Shakespearean tragedy. I engage with a range of sources, from performance reviews to popular psychology, to locate these canonical moments in Shakespearean performance history as flashpoints in a cultural history of emotion.
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Bălan, Daniela Andreea. "Funkce vyprávění v moderním americkém dramatu: mapování lidského vědomí." Master's thesis, 2020. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-436335.

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1 Thesis Abstract The present thesis explores six plays written by three (post)modern American playwrights - David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago and Oleanna, Sam Shepard's Buried Child and True West, and Suzan-Lori Parksʼ The America Play and Topdog/Underdog in order to define and analyze the functions of performative storytelling in the dramatic texts as well as its effects on the characters' identity. In Reading Narrative, J. Hillis Miller analyzes performative storytelling as a human shaped process that people use in order to translate events into meaning and meaning into shared information. Moreover, in Narrative as Performance, Marie Maclean demonstrates the importance of this device in recalibrating human memory and communication and in enriching the traditional mimetic process used in theatre. These ideas are closely followed in the aforementioned American plays through the lenses of the most prominent themes of the end of the twentieth century American theatre. Each of the three American writers uses performative storytelling to delineate socio-political themes. David Mamet comments on the artificiality of the American self, Sam Shepard speaks about the importance of familial past and relationships, whereas Suzan-Lori Parks describes the impact of major national narratives on the...
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22

Hovorka, Jan. "Rodina v moderním americkém dramatu." Master's thesis, 2011. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-298950.

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This work analyses the American family in context of society and its demands. It focuses on the cannonical works of the Modern American drama, namely plays of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and David Mamet. The playwrights are analysed in two distinctive groups according to similar themes they share. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller depict the family under increasing pressure from the outside as well from the inside. The unit disintegrates, members of the family escape and thus the unit loses its funtions. The pressure is imposed by the tenets of the American mythology that governs the society, which, in turn, influences the family. The common theme of the first group of playwrights is the feeling of loss. This comprises of two dimensions - spatial and tempoval. The second group of playwrights share the same theme of loss with its spatial and temporal implications. They are characteristic by their distinctive use of language that depicts the prevalent sense of doom, apocalypse, futility and sterility. The search for identity is also implied by the restlessness of characters. The detrimental effect of harsh business environment on the family is explored with regards to masculinity. The work shows the family in the context of the 1950s, an era when the family was elevated to...
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23

Watt, Diane Lilian. "The disintegration of a dream : a study of Sam Shephard's family trilogy, Curse of the starving class, Buried child and True west." Diss., 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17851.

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The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America
M.A. (English)
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