Series:

Understanding Contemporary American Literature

2 total works

Cover of Understanding Tennessee Williams
Alice Griffin offers an in-depth evaluation of the nine plays that established Tennessee Williams as America's greatest lyric dramatist. Describing him as the first playwright writing in English to combine full-blooded characters, theatricalism, and poetic dialogue, Griffin considers Williams both as a literary figure and as a stage innovator.

Griffin analyzes the language, characters, dramatic effects, and staging of these classic plays, and she calls attention to Williams's unique gift for creating dialogue as lyrical poetry yet as authentic as everyday conversation. She reveals the importance of symbolism in his work, uncovers his often overlooked humor, and explains his insistence on "plastic" presentations. Griffin also chronicles the resistance that Williams met when he tried to bring his revolutionary staging ideas to the commercial theater.

Griffin viewed the plays as originally staged and discussed them with the playwright, the directors, and the actors. From her association with these initial productions, Griffin shares her knowledge of Williams's frustration with the presentation of his work. She remedies what she considers to be misguided interpretations of those early productions by measuring the original stage productions against Williams's stated aims.

Cover of Understanding Arthur Miller
This appraisal of Arthur Miller's theatrical canon illumines the international importance of a playwright whose work is considered a mirror of American life. Griffin demonstrates that Miller's plays, though seeming to centre on uniquely American issues, speak to audiences from Brazil to Russia, Iceland to China - the last being a country where "Death of a Salesman" has enjoyed tremendous popularity despite the unfamiliarity of the Chinese people with Willy Loman's occupation. The book discusses Arthur Miller's major plays in depth, analyzing characters, plots, themes, dramatic effects and language. It also reviews: his one-act plays and longer plays of the 1980s; two plays of the 1990s, "The Last Yankee" and "Broken Glass"; his screenplay for the film version of "The Crucible"; and his articles, essays, speeches and introductions. A theatre editor and critic and drama professor when Miller's works were first staged, Griffin recalls the harshness with which most reviewers initially judged Miller's plays and recounts the vigour of the McCarthyistic attack on "The Crucible".