Other American authors 1900-1960 (NIVEL AVANZADO)

 

 

Eugene O'Neill     (1888-1953)

 

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, US dramatist, Irish stock, b. New York, son of a playwright; sailor and gold prospector; realist-symbolist dramatist; psychological analyst of character, pessimist;  Nobel Prize 1936; d. Cape Cod.

 

 

Works

 

O'Neill, Eugene. The Emperor Jones. Tragedy. 1920, 1921.

_____. Anna Christie. Drama. 1921, 1922. (On prostitution).

_____. The Hairy Ape. Drama. 1922.

_____. The Great God Brown. Drama. 1925.

_____. Mourning Becomes Electra. Dramatic trilogy. 1931. (Oresteia adapted to US Civil War)

_____. The Iceman Cometh. Drama. 1946.

_____. Long Day's Journey into Night. Drama. Written 1940-41, pub. 1956. (Pulitzer Prize 1957).

 

 

 

John Steinbeck        (1902-1968) 

US novelist, worker and student at Stanford; Pulitzer prize for fiction, Nobel prize for literature 1962 

 

_____. To a God Unknown. Novel. 1933.

_____. Tortilla Flat. Fiction. 1935.

_____. The Grapes of Wrath. Novel. 1939. (Pulitzer prize for fiction 1940).

_____. East of Eden. Novel. 1952.

Langston Hughes           (1902-1967)

US modernist poet, Black American; b. Missouri, from a middle class family with anti-slavery tradition; mother divorced and remarried, l. Cleveland; BA Lincoln U, PA; radical politics, stayed in Russia, correspondent during Spanish Civil War, travelled, menial jobs, poverty, l. Harlem, prominent figure of the "Harlem Renaissance"; taught at universities, investigated as suspected Communist, champion of Black Arts movement

Hughes, Langston. "As I Grew Older." Poem. All Poetry.*

         https://allpoetry.com/As-I-Grew-Older

         2019

_____. "I, too." Poem. Poetry Foundation.*

         https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47558/i-too

         2019

 

 

 

Tennessee Williams          (1911-1983)

 

(US dramatist, b. Thomas Lanier Williams, Mississippi, son of a traveling salesman, St. Louis 1918-, U of Missouri, worker, nervous breakdown, then Washington U and U of of Iowa, writer under name Tennessee, lived around USA and Mexico, success with Glass Menagerie. Homosexual relationships with Donald Windham and others; wild gay lifestyle, literary prestige decayed in later career, increasing interest in sadism and violence, self-destructive and addictive old age)

 

_____.  The Glass Menagerie. Drama. 1st performed 1944.

_____. A Streetcar Named Desire. Drama. 1947.

_____. The Rose Tattoo. Drama. 1950.

_____. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Drama. 1955.  (Pulitzer Prize).

 

A modern performance of  A Streetcar Named Desire (not the Elia Kazan film):

 

 

 

Arthur Miller  (1915-2005)

 

 

(Arthur Asher Miller, US dramatist; b. New York City, son of Austrian-Jewish immigrants, father well-to-to illiterate manufacturer, ruined in the Depression; manual worker and student, grad. U of Michigan 1938, friend of drama theorist Kenneth Rowe; l. Brooklyn, married Mary Slattery 1940, exempted from military service; Communist contacts, ps. "Matt Wayne"; 2 children, affair with Marilyn Monroe 1951; divorced wife and m. Marilyn Monroe 1956, quarrelled with Elia Kazan; testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee 1956 as suspected Communist, blacklisted; divorced Monroe 1961 and m. Ingebord Morat 1962 (Morat d. 2002), 2 children, 1 with Down syndrome, never visited by him; campaigned for dissident writers in USSR; inducted to the American Theatre Hall of Fame 1979; lived with painter Agnes Barley from 2002; Pulitzer Prize, National Medal of the Arts 1993; PEN Award 1998; Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize 1999; Jefferson Lecture 2001; Príncipe de Asturias Prize 2002; Jerusalem Prize 2002; President of PEN international 1965)

 

 

Works

 

Miller, Arthur. All My Sons. Drama. 1947. (Tony Award for best Author).

_____. Death of a Salesman. Drama. First performed Broadway, Morosko Theatre, dir. Elia Kazan, 1949. (Tony Award for Best Author; New York Drama Circle Critics' Award, Pulitzer Prize for Drama).

_____. The Crucible. Drama. 1953. (Spanish trans.: Las brujas de Salem).

_____. A View from the Bridge. Drama. 1955. (1st version in verse; rev. as longer play in prose).

_____. After the Fall. Drama. 1964. (On his life with Monroe).

_____. Incident at Vichy. Drama. 1964. (Antisemitism, denial).

_____. Broken Glass. Drama. 1994. (Kristallnacht).

Una representación en español de The Crucible (Las Brujas de Salem, 1973):