Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years.This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides:· a biogr...

This book is a study of the short story, one of the widest taught genres in English literature, from an innovative methodological perspective. Both liminality and the short story are well-researched phenomena, but the combination of both is not frequent. This book discusses the relevance of the concept of liminality for the short story genre and for short story cycles, emphasizing theoretical perspectives, methodological relevance and applicability.Liminality as a concept of demarc...

"A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny." — The Daily TelegraphIn The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy's life. In doing so, he raises—with gentle wit and pitch-perfect command of character—not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions...

Don't waste money on individual texts by a classic author. Get (nearly) all in 1, 2 or (at most) 3 FREE-FOREVER volumes. Save space in your ebook shelves.The works of Jane Austen as originally published but converted for easy reading by cross-platform ebook / ePUB standards. Organized alphabetically and by type of text for quicker navigation; a master table of contents leads you to specific tables of contents for each included work. This volume includes:

In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understan...

The only difference between me and the people judging me is they weren't smart enough to do what we did.One of the most infamous scandals in financial history becomes a theatrical epic. At once a case study and an allegory, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who became 'the most vilified figure from the financial scandal of the century.'This Student Edition features expert and helpful annotat...

Strathoykel, Sutherland. "When the Sheriff and his men arrived, the women were on the road and the men behind the walls. The women shouted 'Better to die here than America or the Cape of Good Hope'. The first blow was struck by a woman with a stick. The gentry leant out of their saddles and beat at the women's heads with their crops." (John McGrath)

Arden of Faversham * A Woman Killed with Kindness * The Witch of Edmonton * The English Traveller In about 1590, an unknown dramatist had the idea of writing a tragedy about the lives of ordinary people, instead of the genre's usual complement of kings and queens and politicians. His play, Arden of Faversham, inaugurated a new genre of 'domestic' drama, set in near-contemporary England and concerned with issues of marriage, crime, and property rather than war and power. Arden dramatizes a ...

Worldwide Appreciation of the Short Story Form Spans Cultures and Centuries!In this concise volume, Gulnaz Fatma traces the short story from its origins infables, ancient poetry, and tales such as The Arabian Nights, to its modern formin the early American stories of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, and then throughthe twentieth century and throughout the world. The elements of what makesa short story are presented along with a discussion of the difficulties in ...

Four plays from the rich theatrical world of Catalan drama.Since the early 1990s, Catalonia has proven to the world that its rich heritage and artistic tradition are worthy of focus and study. The plays in the volume reflect the post-Franco era during which Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia have become the focal point for new dramatic expression.Joan Brossa (1919-1998) was the spiritual father of this new wave of artistic revolution in writing. His play The Quarrel...

What 2012's I Drank the Toxic Cocktail started, The Knight and the Princess continues in spirit, although it is no sequel. The Knight and the Princess uses a series of character descriptions, hypotheticals, cryptic messages and logic puzzles to advance the reader through its fairy tale storyline. Borrowing intellectually from literary criticism, political science and economics, The Knight and the Princess tells a familiar tale of love and war in an analytical way. The story is told not thr...

When George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, the world lost one of its most well-known authors, a revolutionary who was as renowned for his personality as he was for his humour, humanity, and rebellious thinking. He remains a compelling figure who deserves attention not only for how influential he was in his time, but for how relevant he is to ours. This collection sets Shaw's life and achievements in context, with forty-two scholarly essays devoted to subjects that interested him and defined hi...