“It is a love story,” remarks Annie Proulx in an interview with Sandy Cohen, “an old, old story.” She has also said that she believes “the country is hungry for this story.” After appearing in the New Yorker on October… Read More ›
American Literature
Analysis of Richard Wright’s Bright and Morning Star
In 1938, when Richard Wright published Bright and Morning Star in the magazine New Masses, and in 1940, when he added it as the last of the stories in a collection entitled Uncle Tom’s Children, he did not yet anticipate the… Read More ›
Analysis of Jean Toomer’s Box Seat
Box Seat is perhaps the most provocatively ambiguous short story included in the African-American writer Jean Toomer’s Cane, a collection of poems, sketches, and dramatic vignettes. It includes such strange lyricisms as “shy girls whose eyes shine reticently upon—the gleaming… Read More ›
Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s The Artificial Nigger
The Artificial Nigger focuses on several themes that recur in Flannery O’Connor‘s (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) fiction. It features tension between generations (an adult, Mr. Head, who is determined to prove his intellectual ability over a child);… Read More ›
Analysis of Anne Tyler’s The Artificial Family
By the time Anne Tyler published The Artificial Family, her 20th story, in the summer of 1975, she was already an established writer who had published her fifth novel. Soon after Toby Scott and Mary Glover meet at a party in… Read More ›
Analysis of Bernard Malamud’s Armistice
Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was 26 when he wrote Armistice in mid-1940. The story had remained unpublished for nearly 50 years until released posthumously in 1989 as the first of his 16 theretofore uncollected stories… Read More ›
Analysis of Edith Wharton’s April Showers
In her short story April Showers, (1900) Edith Wharton tells the story of Theodora (writing under the pseudonym of Gladys Glyn), an aspiring young writer who has just completed her first novel, April Showers. Through the fictional Kathleen Kyd, Wharton… Read More ›
Analysis of Bernard Malamud’s Angel Levine
“Manischevitz, a tailor, in his fifty-first year suffered many reverses and indignities. Previously a man of comfortable means, he overnight lost all he had” (43). So begins Bernard Malamud’s Angel Levine, the fourth story in The Magic Barrel (1958), his… Read More ›
Critical Analysis of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
Published in 1937, Their Eyes Were Watching God is Hurston’s most widely read and discussed book, considered by many to be her masterwork. The novel, which takes place in the South, chronicles the lives of the protagonist, Janie, her three… Read More ›
African-American Short Fiction
Despite the debt the African-American short story owes to the “national art form,” as Frank O’Connor called the American short story, it, like the other genres of the African-American literary tradition, must be traced back to the site that in… Read More ›
Theatre of the Absurd
Describing the philosophical school of existentialism, French novelist and playwright Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) wrote, “[I]n a universe suddenly divested of illusions and of light, man feels an alien, a stranger. . . . This divorce… Read More ›
Theatre Guild
For almost 40 years, the Theatre Guild, which proclaimed the desire to advance theater as an art, as opposed to pursuing commercial reward at the box office, was among the most influential producing organizations in America. The Guild arose in… Read More ›
The Provincetown Players
The Provincetown Players was one of the most influential of the small, subscription theater groups that sprang up across America during the first two decades of the 20th century (see Little Theater Movement). Founded in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and later transplanted… Read More ›
Off-Off-Broadway Theater
Off-Off-Broadway is the experimental edge of New York theater. If Broadway is about commercial runs, and Off-Broadway today is about new voices and revivals, then Off-OffBroadway is about theater as performance, an affective experience. Jerry Talmer, writing for the Village… Read More ›
Off-Broadway Theater
Off-Broadway developed as an alternative to Broadway, one that would free the creative possibilities of the stage from commercialism. It came into its own in the 1960s and 1970s, with important productions and serious attention from drama critics and the… Read More ›
The Living Theatre
Founded in 1947 by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the Living Theatre started inauspiciously in the Becks’ living room, seating not more than 20 spectators. In these early years, the company produced experimental work by Paul Goodman, Gertrude Stein, Bertolt… Read More ›
Little Theater Movement
The rise of the “little theater” movement was a reaction to the traditional practices of the American stage prior to 1910. Although the smallest towns had theater buildings and vaudeville houses in which well-worn plays and players kept up a… Read More ›
Hispanic Drama
The history of Hispanic drama in what is now the United States begins in 1598 in present-day New Mexico with a theatrical recreation of Cortés’s conquest of Mexico staged by Juan Oñate and his followers entitled Los Moros y los… Read More ›
The Group Theatre
Founded in 1931 by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg, the Group Theatre was an ensemble theater formed as a response to the old-fashioned theater of light entertainment that prevailed in the late 1920s. During its 10-year existence, the… Read More ›
Gay and Lesbian Theater
The definition of what exactly constitutes “gay and lesbian theater” determines where one begins an examination of its place in American drama. Gay and lesbian drama is generally regarded as a contemporary phenomenon, denoting those plays specifically written or performed… Read More ›