The Present Book, The Plays Of Eugene O Neill : A Critical Study, Is A Full-Length Study Of Eugene O Neill S Major Plays. O Neil, Who Was Awarded The Nobel Prize For Literature In November 1936, Has A Firm Belief That Powerlessness, Cultural-Estrangement, Social-Isolation, Self-Estrangement And Normlessness Are The Major Factors Which Account For The Realistic Representation Of The Problems Of The Individual In His Plays. O Neill S Plays Are Modern Tragedies, Striking At The Very Root Of Sickness Inherent In The Present Day World. He Claims That He Has Studied Man Not In Relation To Man, But Man In Relation To God.

In Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle, Doris Alexander gives us a new kind of inside biography that begins where the others leave off. It follows O'Neill through the door into his writing room to give a blow-by-blow account of how he fought out in his plays his great life battles&—love against hate, doubt against belief, life against death&—to an ever-expanding understanding. It presents a new kind of criticism, showing how O'Neill's most intimate struggles worked their way to resolution through the drama of his plays. Alexander reveals that he was engineering his own consciousness through his plays and solving his life problems&—while the tone, imagery, and richness of the plays all came out of the nexus of memories summoned up by the urgency of the problems he faced in them. By the way of O'Neill, this study moves toward a theory of the impulse that sets off a writer's creativity, and a theory of how that impulse acts to shape a work, not only in a dramatist like O'Neill but also in the case of writers in other mediums, and even of painters and composers. The study begins with Desire Under the Elms because that play's plot was consolidated by a dream that opened up the transfixing grief that precipitated the play for O'Neill, and it ends with Days Without End when he had resolved his major emotional-philosophical struggle and created within himself the voice of his final great plays. Since the analysis brings to bear on the plays all of his conscious decisions, ideas, theories, as well as the life-and-death struggles motivating them, documenting even the final creative changes made during rehearsals, this book provides a definitive account of the nine plays analyzed in detail (Desire Under the Elms, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed, Strange Interlude, Dynamo, Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, and Days Without End, with additional analysis of plays written before and after.

This study explores the personal, historical, and artistic influences that combined to form such dark and influential American masterpieces as 'The Iceman Cometh', 'The Emperor Jones', 'Mourning Becomes Electra', 'Hughie', and - arguably the finest tragedy ever written by an American - 'Long Day's Journey into Night'.

Celebrated for their books on Eugene O’Neill and enjoying access to a trove of previously sealed archival material, the Gelbs deliver their final volume on the stormy life and brilliant oeuvre of this Nobel Prize–winning American playwright. This is a tour through both a magical moment in American theater and the troubled life of a genius. Not a peep show or a celebrity gossip fest, this book is a brilliant investigation of the emotional knots that ensnared one of our most important playwrights. Handsome, charming when he wanted to be: O’Neill was the flame women were drawn to—all, that is, except his mother, who never let him forget he was unwanted. By Women Possessed follows O’Neill through his great successes, the failures he was able to shrug off, and the long eclipse, a twelve-year period in which, despite the Nobel, nothing he wrote was produced. But ahead lay his greatest achievements: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Both were ahead of their time and both received lukewarm receptions. It wasn’t until after his death that his widow, the keeper of the flame, began a fierce and successful campaign to restore his reputation. The result is that today, just over 125 years after his birth, O’Neill is a towering presence in the theater, his work—always in performance here and abroad—still electrifying audiences. Perhaps of equal importance, he is the acknowledged father of modern American theater, the man who paved the way for the likes of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and a host of others. But, as Williams has said, at a cost: “O’Neill gave birth to the American theater and died for it.”

Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Laureate in Literature and Pulitzer Prize winner, is widely known for his full length plays. However, his one-act plays are the foundation of his work - both thematically and stylistically, they telescope his later plays. This collection aims to fill the gap by examining these texts, during what can be considered O'Neill's formative writing years, and the foundational period of American drama. A wide-ranging investigation into O'Neill's one-acts, the contributors shed light on a less-explored part of his career and assist scholars in understanding O'Neill's entire oeuvre.

THE STORY: As told by Chapman, (NY News): The time of the play is 1828, and the setting is a tavern in a village near Boston. The tavern is owned by a tempestuous Irishman, Con Melody, who is as proud as he is ill-tempered. He had been born with w

Stricken with guilt and grief when his father, mother and brother died in quick succession, Eugene O'Neill mourned deeply for two decades. This critical biography presents an understanding of O'Neill's life, work and slow grieving.