Alan Nadel

The Theatre of August Wilson (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The first comprehensive study of August Wilson's drama introduces the major themes and motifs that unite Wilson's ten-play cycle about African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. Framed by Wilson's life experiences and informed by his extensive interviews, this book provides fresh, coherent, detailed readings of each play, well-situated in the extant scholarship. It also provides an overview of the cycle as a whole, demonstrating how it comprises a compelling interrogation of American culture and historiography. Keenly aware of the musical paradigms informing Wilson's dramatic technique, Nadel shows how jazz and, particularly, the blues provide the structural mechanisms that allow Wilson to examine alternative notions of time, property, and law. Wilson's improvisational logics become crucial to expressing his notions of black identity and resituating the relationship of literal to figurative in the African American community. The final two chapters include contributions by scholars Harry J. Elam, Jr. and Donald E. Pease

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks UK
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. Mai 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781472528322
• Artikelnr.: 53275968

Autorenporträt

Alan Nadel is William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky, USA. He is the author of six books on post-WWII American literature, including: The Theatre of August Wilson (Methuen Drama, 2018), Demographic Angst: Cultural Narratives and American Films of the 1950s (2017), Containment Culture (1995), and Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (1994). He has also edited of two volumes of essays on August Wilson, August Wilson: Completing the 20th-Century Cycle (2010) and May All Your Fences Have Gates (1994).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 Becoming August Wilson 3
2 History and/as Performance: The Drama of African American Historiography
17
3 Cutting the Historical Record, Recording the Blues: Ma Rainey's Black
Bottom 37
4 Beginning Again, Again: Gem of the Ocean and Jitney 51
5 The Boundaries of Property and the Properties of Humanity: Fences and Joe
Turner's Come and Gone 67
6 The Properties of the Piano and the Legacy of Human Property: The Piano
Lesson 87
7 Urban Renewal by Any Means Necessary: Two Trains Running 109
8 "Sad Stories of the Death of Kings": Seven Guitars and King Hedley II
127
9 The Century That Can't Fix Nothing with the Law: Radio Golf 139
10 Critical and Performance Perspectives 159
Seven Guitars and King Hedley II: August Wilson's Lazarus Complex Donald E.
Pease 159
Performance Politics and Authenticity: Joe Turner's Come and Gone and
Jitney Harry J. Elam, Jr. 179
Notes 199
References 211
Notes on Contributors 215
Index 216