Author Archives
-
Analysis of Jean Anouilh’s Plays
The young Jean Anouilh (23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) arrived in Paris during one of the richest periods of French dramatic activity since the seventeenth century. Recently rescued from the commercial doldrums by a “Cartel” of four brilliant… Read More ›
-
Analysis of John Millington Synge’s Plays
When, in 1893, John Millington Synge (16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909) was choosing between musical and literary careers, two seminal documents were published that would profoundly affect his decision and form the character of his subsequent work. These… Read More ›
-
Analysis of John Osborne’s Plays
John Osborne’s (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) most generous critics credit him with having transformed the English stage on a single night: May 8, 1956, when Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court Theatre. He is… Read More ›
-
Analysis of George Bernard Shaw’s Plays
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) came to an English theater settled into the well-made play, a theater that had not known a first-rate dramatist for more than a century. The pap on which its audiences… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Tom Stoppard’s Plays
Tom Stoppard’s (born. 3 July 1937) dramaturgy reveals a cyclical pattern of activity. He tends to explore certain subjects or techniques in several minor works, then creates a major play that integrates the fruits of his earlier trial runs. Thus… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Luigi Pirandello’s Plays
In Each in His Own Way, Luigi Pirandello (28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) playfully has one of his characters ask another to justify his incessant “harping on this illusion and reality string.” So persistent is Pirandello’s dramatic examination… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Harold Pinter’s Plays
Harold Pinter (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) is sometimes associated with the generation of British playwrights who emerged in the 1950’s and are known as the Angry Young Men. His first plays, with their dingy, working-class settings and surface… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Eugene O’Neill’s Plays
Eugene O’Neill has often been criticized for his choice of characters, for their aberrant psychologies, and for their emotionalism. Certainly he dealt with emotions, but he did so because he believed that emotions were a better guide than thoughts in… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Eugene Ionesco’s Plays
Although Eugène Ionesco’s (26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) dramatic art is often traced to such precursors as the plays of Alfred Jarry and Antonin Artaud, it is essentially sui generis, springing primarily from nightmarish visions deeply rooted in… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Bertolt Brecht’s Plays
Bertolt Brecht’s (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956) early dramas are anarchic, nihilistic, and antibourgeois. In them, he glorifies antisocial outsiders such as adventurers, pirates, and prostitutes; the tone of these works is often cynical. In the years after… Read More ›
-
Analysis of Edward Albee’s Plays
Though he is touted sometimes as the chief American practitioner of the absurd in drama, Edward Albee (March 12, 1928 – September 16, 2016) only rarely combines in a single work both the techniques and the philosophy associated with that… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Aristotle
Aristotle (384–322 bce) was born in Stagira. His father, Nicomachus, was a doctor at the court of Macedonia. The profession of medicine may well have influenced Aristotle’s interests, and his association with Macedon was lifelong: in 343 he became tutor… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of George Berkeley
George Berkeley’s (1685–1753 ce) most lasting philosophical legacies are his immaterialism – the denial of the existence of matter – and his idealism, the positive doctrine that reality is constituted by spirits and their ideas. This is as Berkeley would… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (1818–1883) was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, son of a Jewish lawyer who converted to Christianity in 1824. After studying law for a year at the University of Bonn, Marx left the Rhineland for the… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Buddha
The person known as “the Buddha” (c.480–400 bce) was Siddhattha Gotama (in Pali; in Sanskrit Siddhartha Gautama). “Buddha” means “Awakened One” or “Enlightened One,” and is a descriptive title rather than a name. Gotama lived in north-east India at a… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi [Chuang Tzu or Chuang Chou] (c.360 bce) may have written up to seven chapters (The “Inner Chapters”) of The Zhuangzi collection. His technical mastery of ancient Chinese linguistic theory in some of these suggests that Zhuangzi studied and thought… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Xunzi
Xunzi [Hsün Tzu] or Xun Kuang [Hsün K’uang], who lived between from about 310 to after 230 bce, made unique contributions to Chinese philosophy in several important areas: the role of music and ritual in government and society; the concept… Read More ›
-
Key Theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was the leading analytical philosopher of the twentieth century. His two philosophical masterpieces, the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1921) and the posthumous Philosophical Investigations (1953), changed the course of the subject. The first was the primary origin of the… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza
Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677 ce) has been a figure of some notoriety in the history of Western philosophy. Born in Amsterdam, into a community of Marrano Jews from Portugal, the young Spinoza had an uneasy relationship to both Christianity and… Read More ›
-
The Philosophy of Socrates
Socrates (470/469–399 bce), mentor of Plato and founder of moral philosophy, was the son of Sophroniscus (a statuary) and Phaenarete (a midwife). According to a late doxographical tradition, he followed for a time in his father’s footsteps – a claim… Read More ›
You must be logged in to post a comment.