英美文学选读 第 26 讲：尤金 · 奥尼尔 主讲教师：王金娥 副教授

American Drama 美国戏剧

1916, Eugene O'Neill’s first play Bound East for Cardiff 《东航加迪夫》 independent department of American literature equal to poetry and novel renaissance of drama in the 1920s drama with social concern in the 1930s keep developing in the 1940s and the post-war period

Eugene O'Neill 尤金 · 奥尼尔 “The American Shakespeare”

I. Life and works ( ) * born in New York into a theatrical family * his father, a famous actor traveled around with his father's group a lot of wandering and loafing -- short-lived life in Princeton ( ) -- at 21, voyage to South America and South Africa * Back to America, out of work

, developed tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium had the leisure to read and meditate, lost in the works of Ibsen and Strindberg 1914, joined a workshop at Harvard to learn to write better; went to live in Greenwich Village, New York, and began to write

49 plays of various length the summer of 1916 Bound East for Cardiff (one-act play) other works: Beyond the Horizon (1920) The Emperor Jones (1920) The Hairy Ape (1922) The Iceman Cometh (1946) Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956)

the Nobel Prize in 1936

II. Reading 1.The Hairy Ape 《毛猿》 Yank (a stoker on a luxury liner) realize that he does not belong anywhere worried, violent in quest for self-identity zoo, the great ape

die in the arms of the gorilla without ever finding his place of belonging * the problem of modern man's sense of "belonging" general tone: total despair -- man is rootless in an indifferent and impersonal universe

2. Long Day’s Journey into Night 《通往黑夜的漫漫长日》 published in 1956 a world classic climax of O'Neill's career

Characters: the Tyrones autobiographical, modeled on the O'Neill family James Tyrone, the father, a famous actor, anxious to get rich Mary Tyrone, the mother, a drug addict, mentally ill, unhappy with her married life Jamie, their elder son, lost faith in life Edmund, wanderer, came back with tuberculosis all suffer frustrations, wish to escape from the harsh reality

Plot: Scene: the living room of the family's summer home Time: 8:30 A.M. in August 1912 till midnight meet in the living room, tormenting each other till midnight -- the father, angry with the mother for her drug addiction -- the mother, angry with her sons for being good for nothing

-- the sons, angry with their parents for not being good parents * torn in a war between love and hate; life is painful for them * no relief, no light, all ends in darkness In a figurative sense, this play is a metaphor for O'Neill's lifelong effort to find truth and the way to be accepted.

III. Artistic features 1. pessimistic color * plays: tragedies, dealing with the basic issues of human existence and difficulty * characters: seeking meaning and purpose, final disappointment and despair * the author himself: fighting with the perplexity about the truth of life, searching for an answer both psychologically and artistically; his dramatic thought follows a tragic pattern: from a celebration and romantic dream, to the doubt about the reality of the dream, or inevitability of defeat

2. tireless experimentalist experimenting with new styles and forms * borrowed from the best traditions of European drama, such as Greek tragedies, realism of Ibsen, expressionism of Strindberg, and fused them into an art of his own * borrowed from modern literary techniques: stream-of-consciousness * abstract and symbolic stage sets; lighting and music * language: dialect, special spelling to indicate a particular accent or manner of speech

小结 奥尼尔的生平及创作生涯 奥尼尔的戏剧 奥尼尔戏剧的悲观主义色彩 奥尼尔戏剧的艺术特色

习题 简述奥尼尔戏剧的艺术特色。

谢谢！！再见！！