Ye Bare and Ye Cubb (1665) by William Darby 
2. 18th century
American subjects began to be treated seriously. The first tragedy is The  Contrast (1787) by Royal Tyler. It is considered “typical American play” about American soldiers.
3. 19th century
poetical plays, esp in the first  half of a group of playwrights
after civil war: realism, melodrama,  emotional incidents (domestic melodrama), with simple plots
4. 20th century
separation from the old tradition
1920s: “Little Theatre Movement”  began after 1912, Washington Square Players, Provincetown Players (New York City, Greenage Village). They are freed from the conventional theatre and can be as experimental as they like.
1930s: Eugene O’Neil, Clifford Odets 
 Post-war: second climax of American drama, Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
60s: Theatre of the Absurd, Edward Albee 
II. Eugene O’Neil
1. life
2. works
(1) Bound East for Cardiff
(2) Beyond the Horizon
(3) The Emperor Jones
(4) The Hairy Ape
(5) Desire under the Elms
(6) The Iceman Cometh
(7) Long Day’s Journey into Night
3. point of view
His purpose is to get the root of human desires and frustrations. He showed most characters in his plays as seeking meaning and purpose in their lives, some through love, some through religion, some through revenge, all met disappointment. The characters seem to share O’Neil’s perplexities of human nature. As a result of his tragic and nihilistic view of life, his works, in general, indicated chaos and hopelessness.
4. The Hairy Ape
Yank
5. style
(1) O’Neil was a tireless experimentalist in dramatic art. He paid little attention to the division of scenes. He introduced the realistic or even the naturalistic into the American theatre.
(2) He borrowed freely from the best traditions of European drama, especially the stream of consciousness.
(3) He made use of setting and stage property to help in his dramatic representation.
(4) He wrote long introduction and directions for all the scenes, explaining the mood and atmosphere.
(5) He sometimes wrote the actors’ lines in dialect.
6. His position
He was the first playwright to explore serious themes in theatre. With him, American drama developed into a form of literature. And in him, American drama came of age (mature). He came only after Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw in the world of drama.
III. Tennessee Williams
1. life
2. point of view and themes
He writes about violence, sex, homosexuality (taboos in drama). Some of his plays rooted in southern social scene. The characters are often unhappy wanderers; lonely, vulnerable women indulged in memory of the past or illusion of the future. He was attracted to bizarre characters and their predicament. He looked deeply into the psychology of the outcasts of society. He saw life a game which cannot be won. Almost all his characters are defeated.
3. his plays
(1) The Glass Menagerie
(2) A Streetcar Named Desire
(3) Summer and Smoke
(4) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
4. style
(1) combination of coarseness and poetry
(2) vivid southern speech
(3) He helped to break taboos, long imposed on the American literature.
IV. Arthur Miller
1. life
2. theme: dilemma of modern man in relation to family and work
3. his plays
(1) The Man Who Had All the Luck
(2) All My Sons
(3) Death of a Salesman
(4) The Crucible
(5) A View for the Bridge
V. Theatre of the Absurd
1. introduction: existentialist philosophy, mainly in Europe
2. four founders: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov
3. What is “absurd”?
Humorous and meaningless
4. features
(1) The basic assumption: human life lacks coherence and is chaotic. Life operates without any rules.
(2) The world is meaningless, so the play appears meaningless.
(3) It examines the problems of life and death, of isolation and communication.
(4) It satirizes people who are unaware of the ultimate reality (death).
(5) In absurd drama, situation is more important than characters and events. The dramatist wants to show people what their situation in their life is. Therefore, he constructs a play which presents a picture of the universal situation. One result of these is that the characters are often comic and humorous.
5. Edward Albee
(1) Life
(2) Works
a. Zoo Story
b. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Chapter 8 Black American Literature
I. Overview
Negro – coloured (legally free) – black (after civil rights movement)
1. oral tradition
(1) songs and ballads
(2) spirituals: sorrow of the singers’ earlier condition and longing for freedom
(3) blues: after civil war, derived from work songs – loneliness, separation, losses, wonderings, love, desperation, sense of doom
(4) jazz: after WWI, developed from blues, died out in the Great Depression
2. written literature (from 1760s)
(1) poetry: religious, enduring, patient to the white
(2) slave narrative: autobiographical experience of the person
(3) 1920s: Harlem Renaissance – New York, black – black dialect and black folklore – “the new negro” – representatives: Langston Hughes (“black poet laureate”), Huston, Claude McKay
(4) 1940s: Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison
(5) 50s~60s: a lot of black writers emerged in the civil rights movement: James Baldwin, Brooks, Jones
(6) 70s~80s: publishing of “Root” (Alex Haley), Walker – “The Colour Purple”, Morrison (the second woman writer and the only black who won Nobel Prize)
II. Richard Wright
1. life
2. works
(1) Uncle Tom’s Children: Four Novellas
(2) Native Son
(3) Black Boy
(4) The Outsider (the first novel of existentialism in America, published in France)
3. themes and subjects
His common theme is to condemn racism, urge reform, criticize evils of society. His books focus on racial conflict and physical violence. They review the devastating effect of institutionalized hatred (hatred brought by social system) and humiliation on black males’ psyche. They affirmed dignity and humility of society’s outcasts.
4. writing techniques – realism, naturalism
He tries to show that people cannot escape from society. Therefore, society must be changed. He is a father figure, especially to the writers of violence.
III. Ralph Ellison
1. life
2. works: Invisible Man
significance: It has a universality of theme (problems of all modern people), not only regional dilemma of existence.
3. attitude: complexity of art – the best art makes good politics, not vice versa.
IV. James Baldwin
1. life
2. works
(1) Go Tell It on the Mountain
(2) Notes of a Native Son
(3) Nobody Knows My Name
(4) The Fire Next Time
3. point of view
Baldwin calls for the blacks to resort to means including force so as to bring about the nation’s self-realization. He saw love and understanding as difficult but necessary way to overcome racial conflict.
4. themes: race, homosexuality
V. Alice Walker
1. life
2. works
(1) Once (a collection of poems)
(2) In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (“womanism” instead of feminism)
(3) The Colour Purple (epistolary)
VI. Toni Morrison
1. life
2. works
(1) The Bluest Eye
(2) Sula
(3) Song of Solomon (the best black novel after Native Son and Invisible Man)
(4) Tar Baby
(5) Beloved
(6) Jazz
(7) Love (trilogy)
3. themes: love, guilt, history, individual, gender, race, religion