The International Strindberg: New Critical Essays

Description

The International Strindberg presents the latest research on the Swedish playwright August Strindberg and his relation to modern and contemporary literature and art. Strindberg’s career spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Although he was also a poet, novelist, painter, and critic, he is best known for his plays. No less a dramatist than Eugene O’Neill called him "that greatest genius of all modern dramatists." Strindberg’s style and methodologies exert a deep influence on theater, poetry, fiction, and filmmaking to this day. In her compelling introduction, Anna Westerståhl Stenport argues that Strindberg’s work embodies and promotes the spirit of internationalism that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Strindberg lived his life internationally and never seemed at home in Sweden or any other country. His writing transcended any "national" literature. Contributors consider Strindberg’s impact on a range of cultural and artistic movements and disciplines—from French décadence, Russian expressionism, and European surrealism to ecocriticism, translation studies, and dramatic practice and theory.