|
Introduction
Chapter
I
From O’Neill to Sam Shepard. A Century of family
plays
I.1. The family play as dramatic
genre
and its evolution
within the American theatre
I.2. Chamber neuroses: the
dysfunctional families of Eugene
O’Neill and Sam Shepard
I.2.1. “The Family Dilemma”: security vs freedom
I.3. Decline and fall of an American Dream: the crisis of the family
system as an aspect of a society in crisis
Chapter
II Long
Day’s Journey into Night
II.1. The play within the O’Neillian canon
II.1.1. The text’s autobiographical nature
II.1.2. “Publication shall not take place...”. How the play
reached
the printed page and the stage in spite of
O’Neill’s
interdict
II.1.3. A play “written in tears and blood” from a man
haunted by the dead
II.2. Text analysis
II.2.1. Themes and structure
II.2.2. Four fates tangled together:
the characters and
their interaction
II.2.3. From light to darkness. The action’s symbolical
journey
II.3. Echoes from Strindberg
II.3.1. “The most modern of moderns”. O’Neill on his
debt to Strindberg
II.3.2. Thematic influences
II.3.3. Stylistic influences: the “supernaturalistic”
technique
Chapter
III
Lars Norén and the drama of the “closed room”
III.1. Brief outline of Norén’s oeuvre
III.1.1. A poet’s passage to playwriting
III.1.2. Autobiography and therapy
III.1.3. The connection with Strindberg and O’Neill
III.2.
Natten är dagens mor
and Kaos är granne med Gud:
two autobiographical
family quartets
III.2.1. The metaphor of the “closed room”
III.2.2. “Närmaste en superrealism”: notes on the plays’style
III.3. Och ge oss skuggorna.
The O’Neill family between
documentary and drama
Appendix
Ingmar
Bergman directs O’Neill. The production of
“Lång dags färd mot natt”
at
Dramaten in 1988.
Bibliography
Return
to "Eugene O'Neill and Lars Norén: 'A Swedish-American Kinship'"
|
