Using selections by American, British, French, German, Russian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Portuguese, and South American critics and authors, Professor Becker illustrates how realism arose as a reaction to romanticism, and how the practitioners of realism developed conflicting ideas about the means they should use and the ends toward which they should strive. The selections are concerned mainly with prose, since, according to the author, prose fiction has been the major vehicle of realism. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre provides essential primary sources which document one of the key movements in modern theatre. Christopher Innes has selected three writers to exemplify the movement, and six plays in particular: * Henrik Ibsen - A Dolls House and Hedda Gabler * Anton Chekhov - The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard * George Bernard Shaw - Mrs Warren's Profession and Heartbreak House. Innes' introduction provides an overview of naturalist theatre. Key themes include: the representation of women, significant contemporary issues and the links between theory, play writing and stage practice. The primary sources explore many aspects of naturalism, giving information on: * the playwrights' intentions when writing plays * contemporary reviews * literary criticism * political and social background * production notes from early performances of the plays.

The study of Naturalist theatre remains a staple and often foundational part of the curriculum at all levels of drama education. This anthology of six of the most commonly studied and revived Naturalist plays from the European repertoire offers a unique compendium that will serve as required reading for drama courses and is ideal for theatre practitioners and fans. The selected plays perfectly reflect the formal and geographical diversity of Naturalist theatre as well as its major philosophical, political and theatrical preoccupations. A critical introduction by Dr Chris Megson contextualises the emergence of Naturalist theatre in the late nineteenth century, identifying its principal aims and methods; provides an analysis of the selected plays, mapping their key preoccupations, and ends by considering Naturalism's enduring legacy and resonance today.

This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

The impact of naturalism, a literary approach invented by Zola and especially significant in the field of the novel through his American «disciples» Crane, Norris, and Dreiser, is well acknowledged and recognized. Not so well recognized, but equally important, is naturalistic theatre; this was a style that also originated with Zola, but its progeny was more international and its significance more radical and insurrectionary than in the less «spectacular» genre of fiction. The Theatre of Naturalism: Disappearing Act establishes the incipiently revolutionary context (between the Paris Communist Commune, crushed in 1871, and the successful Bolshevik insurrection of October 1917) - more or less foregrounded or in the background of works by Zola, Strindberg, Ibsen, Hauptmann, Synge, Shaw, and Tolstoy, focused especially on issues of class struggle and class war, as well as the prospects and possibilities of challenging the hegemony of the ruling orders. Especially in regard to later theatre, for instance the «hypernaturalism» of The Brig (Living Theatre) of Kenneth Brown, and of plays by Arnold Wesker and David Storey - Philip Beitchman frequently invokes themes culled from recent French theory, particularly Derrida's deconstruction and Baudrillard's ideas about simulation. The Theatre of Naturalism will open up new perspectives for anyone interested in theory or theatre, whether scholars or the wider theatre-loving or performing public.

The book applies playwright John Guare's statement that, "the war against naturalism," is the history of the American theatre in the Twentieth-Century to selected plays by important contemporary American playwrights. Crucial to the argument is the recognition that a war presupposes two sides with neither side defeating the other, for if naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be linear with characters circumscribed by their heredity and environment. If non-naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be a hodgepodge of incoherent images. After isolating elements of a naturalistic play in its philosophical and mode of production sense, the book examines plays that wage war in language and character. The plays are all of the past few decades: some by Foreman and Wellman are disorienting; some by Albee, Groff, and Maxwell are controversial; others by Eno and Corthron are by playwrights on the verge of major careers; still others by Overmyer and Jenkin are drawing aspiring playwrights to them as models of new, exciting writing for the theatre. All of them, whether colliding genres and styles or destabilizing meaning as in plays by Gibson and Long or reclaiming a mystery as in plays by Ludlam, Greenberg, and Donagy, challenge naturalism's boundaries. The book not only provides an approach to the contemporary American drama-theatre, but also brings together playwrights not perceived as having any connections other than the fact that they are creating plays today. The text is appropriate for undergraduate students through professors and practitioners.