ERIC ED474105: Family Values in American Drama pdf

ERIC ED474105: Family Values in American Drama

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Description of the Book:

When an educator was invited by a Chinese university to teach a seminar in American drama, she used “family drama” as the organizing theme of her course because she was (and is) convinced that from Eugene O’Neill on, American playwrights have been obsessed with family disintegration and the failure of family harmony. This paper is an outgrowth of the course that the educator gave, first in China and then in her own university. The paper first presents a historical overview of the changing shape of the American family. It then explores how four major American dramatists have portrayed tensions within the family in what became their significant works. The following plays are discussed in detail in the paper: “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (Eugene O’Neill); “Death of a Salesman” (Arthur Miller); “The Glass Menagerie” (Tennessee Williams); and “Raisin in the Sun” (Lorraine Hansberry). In addition, the paper discusses two other plays the educator has used in her course: “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (Edward Albee) and “Night, Mother” (Marsha Norman).

It finds that in each of the families portrayed by the dramatists, the tensions of the family between security and freedom are played out again and again, taking people over the same questions in search of answers. (NKA

• Creator/s: ERIC
• Date: 2002-11
• Year: 2002
• Book Topics/Themes: ERIC Archive, Drama, Family (Sociological Unit), Foreign Countries, Higher Education, Seminars, Thematic Approach, United States Literature, Brown, Joanne

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