The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 9/24/2009
EAN 9780521846042, ISBN10: 0521846048

Hardcover, 226 pages, 23.1 x 15.5 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

August Strindberg is one of the most enduring of nineteenth-century dramatists, and is also an internationally recognised novelist, autobiographer, and painter. This Companion presents contributions by leading international scholars on different aspects of Strindberg's highly colourful life and work. The essays focus primarily on his most celebrated plays; these include the Naturalist Dramas, The Father and Miss Julie; the experimental dramas with which he created a true modernist theatre – To Damascus and A Dream Play; and the Chamber Plays of 1908 which, like so much of his work, exerted a powerful influence on much later twentieth-century drama. His plays are contextualised for what they contribute both to the history of drama and developments in theatre practice, and other essays clarify the enormous importance to these dramas of his other work, most notably the autobiographical novel Inferno, and his lifelong interest in science, the occult, sexual politics, and the visual arts.

Chronology
List of Strindberg's works in Swedish and English
Part I. The Biographical and Cultural Context
1. August Strindberg
the art and science of self-dramatization LINDA HAVERTY RUGG
2. Strindberg and the woman question MARGARETHA FAHLGREN
Part II. The Works
3. Learning to speak
Strindberg and the novel ULF OLSSON
4. The Son of a Servant and the autobiographical fictions PER STOUNBJERG
5. Miss Julie, naturalism, 'The Battle of the Brains', and sexual desire ROSS SHIDELER
6. Strindberg and comedy HANS-GÖRAN EKMAN
7. Crisis and change
Strindberg the unconscious modernist GÖRAN STOCKENSTRÖM
8. A modernist dramaturgy
A Dream Play and The Dance of Death ESZTER SALCZER
9. The chamber plays LYNN R. WILKINSON
10. The history plays MATTHEW H. WIKANDER
Part III. Performance and Legacy
11. Strindberg in the theatre FREDERICK AND LISE-LONE MARKER
12. Bergman's Strindberg EGIL TÖRNQVIST
13. Strindberg and modern drama
some lines of influence FREDDIE ROKEM
Bibliography.