ENGLISH

Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture: Play and Performance from Beckett to Shepard

By John Orr (auth.)

Book information

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Year
1991
ISBN
978-0-333-53697-1, 978-1-349-21562-1
DOI
10.1007/978-1-349-21562-1
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
18 MB (19363413 bytes)
Series
Edinburgh Studies in Culture and Society
Edition
1
Pages
VI, 170\177
Time added
2017-06-25 01:07:36
general;Twentieth-Century LiteratureSociology of Education;Sociology of Education;Lite

Description

This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.

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