Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Magnum Opus offers an original and provocative analysis of Eugene O'Neill's unfinished cycle play project. From 1935 to 1939, Eugene O'Neill worked on a series of plays that would trace the history ...
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Magnum Opus offers an original and provocative analysis of Eugene O'Neill's unfinished cycle play project. From 1935 to 1939, Eugene O'Neill worked on a series of plays that would trace the history of an American family through several generations. He completed just two of the proposed eleven plays—A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions—before putting the project aside and taking up The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night. Most critics have viewed the Cycle as an extended warmup exercise, but Zander Brietzke treats the Cycle on its own terms as separate from the final plays and as O’Neill’s definitive statement on the effects of human greed and capitalism run amuck. The two plays that he did finish, numbers five and six, right in the middle, represent the core of the entire cycle and allude to the family’s past and predict its future in a critique of the American Dream. Combining archival research, literary analysis, and theatrical imagination, Magnum Opus untangles many myths about the Cycle, advances a female character as hero in a new interpretation, and proposes a new production concept as an epic event, a historical drama of our time.Less
Magnum Opus offers an original and provocative analysis of Eugene O'Neill's unfinished cycle play project. From 1935 to 1939, Eugene O'Neill worked on a series of plays that would trace the history of an American family through several generations. He completed just two of the proposed eleven plays—A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions—before putting the project aside and taking up The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night. Most critics have viewed the Cycle as an extended warmup exercise, but Zander Brietzke treats the Cycle on its own terms as separate from the final plays and as O’Neill’s definitive statement on the effects of human greed and capitalism run amuck. The two plays that he did finish, numbers five and six, right in the middle, represent the core of the entire cycle and allude to the family’s past and predict its future in a critique of the American Dream. Combining archival research, literary analysis, and theatrical imagination, Magnum Opus untangles many myths about the Cycle, advances a female character as hero in a new interpretation, and proposes a new production concept as an epic event, a historical drama of our time.
Richard W. Kaeuper
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199244584
- eISBN:
- 9780191697388
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244584.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
This chapter discusses chanson de geste to demonstrate that the ambivalent role of chivalry in issue or order appears in entire works less than in passages selected from many works. It examines the ...
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This chapter discusses chanson de geste to demonstrate that the ambivalent role of chivalry in issue or order appears in entire works less than in passages selected from many works. It examines the role of literature in portraying the relationship of chivalry to Capetian royalty and to the reformed Church. It explores the three broad cycles of the corpus of chansons including the Cycle of the King, the Cycle of William of Orange, and the Cycle of the Barons in Revolt.Less
This chapter discusses chanson de geste to demonstrate that the ambivalent role of chivalry in issue or order appears in entire works less than in passages selected from many works. It examines the role of literature in portraying the relationship of chivalry to Capetian royalty and to the reformed Church. It explores the three broad cycles of the corpus of chansons including the Cycle of the King, the Cycle of William of Orange, and the Cycle of the Barons in Revolt.
Dennis Pardee
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780197264928
- eISBN:
- 9780191754104
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264928.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
Chapter 1 attempted a rough sketch of the uses of writing at Ugarit and, particularly, of the types of texts that are attested in the alphabetic script and the Ugaritic language. It showed that of ...
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Chapter 1 attempted a rough sketch of the uses of writing at Ugarit and, particularly, of the types of texts that are attested in the alphabetic script and the Ugaritic language. It showed that of the roughly 175 religious texts, only about fifty may be qualified as belletristic; virtually all of these are couched in poetry and all deal with aspects of the divine. It would be impossible to cover all of these texts even superficially in the space allotted, and, instead of flitting from one to another in a selection of these texts, this chapter concentrates on the longest literary composition from Ugarit, the six tablets making up the so-called Baal Cycle.Less
Chapter 1 attempted a rough sketch of the uses of writing at Ugarit and, particularly, of the types of texts that are attested in the alphabetic script and the Ugaritic language. It showed that of the roughly 175 religious texts, only about fifty may be qualified as belletristic; virtually all of these are couched in poetry and all deal with aspects of the divine. It would be impossible to cover all of these texts even superficially in the space allotted, and, instead of flitting from one to another in a selection of these texts, this chapter concentrates on the longest literary composition from Ugarit, the six tablets making up the so-called Baal Cycle.
Hamilton Hess
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- April 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780198269755
- eISBN:
- 9780191601163
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198269757.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
The failure of the attempted settlement of the dispute over the teachings of Arius by the Council of Nicaea in 325 resulted in intense turmoil within the Church during the decades to follow, and this ...
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The failure of the attempted settlement of the dispute over the teachings of Arius by the Council of Nicaea in 325 resulted in intense turmoil within the Church during the decades to follow, and this was greatly exacerbated by the division of the Empire after the death of Constantine and the differing ecclesiastical policies of his heirs. Following the deposition of Athanasius and other bishops by the partisans of Arius and their restoration by a council at Rome in 341, a council to resolve the doctrinal differences and personal grievances was convened by permission of the emperors to meet at Serdica in 343. Upon arrival at Serdica, the Eastern bishops, largely sympathetic with the anti‐Nicene party, refused to meet with the Westerns, and two rival councils were held. The Western council confirmed the restoration of Athanasius and his companions at Rome in 341, considered but rejected a new creed, wrote an encyclical and other letters, resolved a dispute over the dating of Easter, and enacted the canons that we are here considering; the Eastern council reapproved the Fourth Creed of Antioch, drafted a paschal cycle, wrote an encyclical condemning Athanasius and his associates and all who had entered into communion with them. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the life of Ossius of Cordova, who presided over the Western council and was also the leading figure in the framing of the Serdican canons.Less
The failure of the attempted settlement of the dispute over the teachings of Arius by the Council of Nicaea in 325 resulted in intense turmoil within the Church during the decades to follow, and this was greatly exacerbated by the division of the Empire after the death of Constantine and the differing ecclesiastical policies of his heirs. Following the deposition of Athanasius and other bishops by the partisans of Arius and their restoration by a council at Rome in 341, a council to resolve the doctrinal differences and personal grievances was convened by permission of the emperors to meet at Serdica in 343. Upon arrival at Serdica, the Eastern bishops, largely sympathetic with the anti‐Nicene party, refused to meet with the Westerns, and two rival councils were held. The Western council confirmed the restoration of Athanasius and his companions at Rome in 341, considered but rejected a new creed, wrote an encyclical and other letters, resolved a dispute over the dating of Easter, and enacted the canons that we are here considering; the Eastern council reapproved the Fourth Creed of Antioch, drafted a paschal cycle, wrote an encyclical condemning Athanasius and his associates and all who had entered into communion with them. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of the life of Ossius of Cordova, who presided over the Western council and was also the leading figure in the framing of the Serdican canons.
Karen Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226540122
- eISBN:
- 9780226540436
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226540436.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Since the first appearance of “romance” (roman) in mid-twelfth-century France, this genre of literature has been condemned by learned readers, who view it as failing to represent reality as it truly ...
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Since the first appearance of “romance” (roman) in mid-twelfth-century France, this genre of literature has been condemned by learned readers, who view it as failing to represent reality as it truly is and, in doing so, as leading its readers astray. While lengthy, narrative literary works in the vernacular at this time could treat the history of Rome or of France, it was those that addressed the history of Britain—that is, Arthurian romance—that came in for special censure. In the fictions they recounted about Merlin, it was argued, these works constituted bad science; in those about King Arthur, bad history; in those about Lancelot, bad morality; and in those about the Holy Grail, bad religion. This book argues that Arthurian romance implicitly recognizes and responds to the criticisms that were being made against it. The works of Chrétien de Troyes, the Grail Continuators, Robert de Boron, and the authors of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles, by replaying the ongoing debates in their pages, all affirm that they are promoting good science, good history, good morality, and good religion, but in a way that asks us to reconceptualize each of these categories. If romance has always appealed to readers despite the criticisms to which it has been subject, it is because it offers a distinctive theory as to what reality is like, at odds with the dominant learned discourses of its time.Less
Since the first appearance of “romance” (roman) in mid-twelfth-century France, this genre of literature has been condemned by learned readers, who view it as failing to represent reality as it truly is and, in doing so, as leading its readers astray. While lengthy, narrative literary works in the vernacular at this time could treat the history of Rome or of France, it was those that addressed the history of Britain—that is, Arthurian romance—that came in for special censure. In the fictions they recounted about Merlin, it was argued, these works constituted bad science; in those about King Arthur, bad history; in those about Lancelot, bad morality; and in those about the Holy Grail, bad religion. This book argues that Arthurian romance implicitly recognizes and responds to the criticisms that were being made against it. The works of Chrétien de Troyes, the Grail Continuators, Robert de Boron, and the authors of the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles, by replaying the ongoing debates in their pages, all affirm that they are promoting good science, good history, good morality, and good religion, but in a way that asks us to reconceptualize each of these categories. If romance has always appealed to readers despite the criticisms to which it has been subject, it is because it offers a distinctive theory as to what reality is like, at odds with the dominant learned discourses of its time.
Evan Friss
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226210919
- eISBN:
- 9780226211077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226211077.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter charts the development of bicycle paths. Special attention is given to the Coney Island Cycle Path, an early example that set a model for others, and the California Cycle-Way, an ...
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This chapter charts the development of bicycle paths. Special attention is given to the Coney Island Cycle Path, an early example that set a model for others, and the California Cycle-Way, an elevated cycle path that epitomized some of the bolder plans to create a cycling network. Finally, the chapter explores the ways in which bicycle paths fragmented the emergent bicycle coalition, some of whom saw the paths as the greatest achievement of cyclists, others of whom thought the paths would detract from the good roads movement and undermine the bicycle's status as a legitimate vehicle.Less
This chapter charts the development of bicycle paths. Special attention is given to the Coney Island Cycle Path, an early example that set a model for others, and the California Cycle-Way, an elevated cycle path that epitomized some of the bolder plans to create a cycling network. Finally, the chapter explores the ways in which bicycle paths fragmented the emergent bicycle coalition, some of whom saw the paths as the greatest achievement of cyclists, others of whom thought the paths would detract from the good roads movement and undermine the bicycle's status as a legitimate vehicle.
Agnes Jäger
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199560547
- eISBN:
- 9780191721267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560547.003.0007
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology, Historical Linguistics
This chapter explains the main negation markers in the history of German are the neg‐particles ni/ne (Neg°), ni(c)ht (SpecNegP), and n‐words. It also details the ratio of these and their ...
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This chapter explains the main negation markers in the history of German are the neg‐particles ni/ne (Neg°), ni(c)ht (SpecNegP), and n‐words. It also details the ratio of these and their co‐occurrence change diachronically due to phonetic weakening and reinforcement of the neg‐particle and a profound change in the indefinite system. It finds that the underlying syntactic structure remained unchanged.Less
This chapter explains the main negation markers in the history of German are the neg‐particles ni/ne (Neg°), ni(c)ht (SpecNegP), and n‐words. It also details the ratio of these and their co‐occurrence change diachronically due to phonetic weakening and reinforcement of the neg‐particle and a profound change in the indefinite system. It finds that the underlying syntactic structure remained unchanged.
Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199557219
- eISBN:
- 9780191720932
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557219.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature, European Literature
Chapter 4 examines the role of violence within the Arthurian ideal, made more acute as the heroes themselves are seen as aggressors against the innocent. Imbricated oppositions between courtly and ...
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Chapter 4 examines the role of violence within the Arthurian ideal, made more acute as the heroes themselves are seen as aggressors against the innocent. Imbricated oppositions between courtly and noncourtly weapons suggest how Chrétien's romance explores human nature in relation to Isaiah's utopian vision of swords beaten into plowshares. The damage as well as the necessity of human aggression emerge through conflicting registers of chivalric and Christian values. The questions Chrétien raises about the legitimacy of violence lead to varied responses in subsequent rewritings: prose rewritings of the Grail story offer rival versions that interact with the verse continuations, though each tradition develops and completes the Grail quest in radically different ways. The Vulgate Cycle's collective quest in pursuit of salvation leads to the destruction of Arthur's kingdom, while the verse continuations as finished by Manessier retain Perceval's ‘ex-centric’, individual quest and tolerate the contradictions written into Chrétien.Less
Chapter 4 examines the role of violence within the Arthurian ideal, made more acute as the heroes themselves are seen as aggressors against the innocent. Imbricated oppositions between courtly and noncourtly weapons suggest how Chrétien's romance explores human nature in relation to Isaiah's utopian vision of swords beaten into plowshares. The damage as well as the necessity of human aggression emerge through conflicting registers of chivalric and Christian values. The questions Chrétien raises about the legitimacy of violence lead to varied responses in subsequent rewritings: prose rewritings of the Grail story offer rival versions that interact with the verse continuations, though each tradition develops and completes the Grail quest in radically different ways. The Vulgate Cycle's collective quest in pursuit of salvation leads to the destruction of Arthur's kingdom, while the verse continuations as finished by Manessier retain Perceval's ‘ex-centric’, individual quest and tolerate the contradictions written into Chrétien.
Richard F. Heller
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780198529743
- eISBN:
- 9780191723919
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198529743.003.0011
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health, Epidemiology
This chapter discusses the differences between individual and population health priorities. It describes the Population Health Evidence Cycle (Ask the question, Collect the evidence, and Understand ...
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This chapter discusses the differences between individual and population health priorities. It describes the Population Health Evidence Cycle (Ask the question, Collect the evidence, and Understand and use the evidence) as an organizing structure for how to involve the public in priority setting. A new definition of public health is advocated: “Use of theory, experience, and evidence derived through the population sciences to improve the health of the population in a way that best meets the implicit and explicit needs of the community (the public)”.Less
This chapter discusses the differences between individual and population health priorities. It describes the Population Health Evidence Cycle (Ask the question, Collect the evidence, and Understand and use the evidence) as an organizing structure for how to involve the public in priority setting. A new definition of public health is advocated: “Use of theory, experience, and evidence derived through the population sciences to improve the health of the population in a way that best meets the implicit and explicit needs of the community (the public)”.
David Wilmsen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- December 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198718123
- eISBN:
- 9780191787485
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198718123.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar ...
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That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar process, called Jespersen’s Cycle, said to have occurred in French, whereby the pre-posed negator ne became associated with an emphatic post-positive particle pas ‘step’—and, in some French vernaculars, with a post-positive pas alone. Yet the similarity between Arabic and French is purely superficial, lacking supporting linguistic evidence. Forcing the facts of Arabic into preconceived theoretical constructs, both formal and functional, engenders erroneous conclusions. The source of the Arabic negator -š is polar interrogation, for which evidence does indeed exist in various Arabic dialects, including Andalusi, Egyptian, Levantine, Maltese, Tunisian, and Yemeni. The polar interrogative šī, itself derived from an existential particle, ultimately arose from the Proto-Semitic presentative ša and 3rd person pronouns šū, šī, and šunu. Supporting evidence for this comes from the West Semitic Modern South Arabian languages, which possess an existential particle, an indefinite determiner, and inchoate interrogative śi analogous in form and function to that of the Arabic šī. With this, it becomes possible to propose the operation of a different cycle in Arabic: the negative-existential (or Croft’s) cycle. Such comparative evidence from Arabic dialects and sister languages, along with historical records of an Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent centuries before the arrival of Arabic speaking Muslims in the 7th century AD, provides convincing evidence for the antiquity of the Arabic dialects.Less
That some dialects of Arabic negate with a pre-posed mā alone, some with what is called ‘bipartite’ negation mā … š, and some with post-positive -š alone has invited comparisons with a similar process, called Jespersen’s Cycle, said to have occurred in French, whereby the pre-posed negator ne became associated with an emphatic post-positive particle pas ‘step’—and, in some French vernaculars, with a post-positive pas alone. Yet the similarity between Arabic and French is purely superficial, lacking supporting linguistic evidence. Forcing the facts of Arabic into preconceived theoretical constructs, both formal and functional, engenders erroneous conclusions. The source of the Arabic negator -š is polar interrogation, for which evidence does indeed exist in various Arabic dialects, including Andalusi, Egyptian, Levantine, Maltese, Tunisian, and Yemeni. The polar interrogative šī, itself derived from an existential particle, ultimately arose from the Proto-Semitic presentative ša and 3rd person pronouns šū, šī, and šunu. Supporting evidence for this comes from the West Semitic Modern South Arabian languages, which possess an existential particle, an indefinite determiner, and inchoate interrogative śi analogous in form and function to that of the Arabic šī. With this, it becomes possible to propose the operation of a different cycle in Arabic: the negative-existential (or Croft’s) cycle. Such comparative evidence from Arabic dialects and sister languages, along with historical records of an Arab presence in the Fertile Crescent centuries before the arrival of Arabic speaking Muslims in the 7th century AD, provides convincing evidence for the antiquity of the Arabic dialects.
Mireille Rosello
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620665
- eISBN:
- 9781789623666
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620665.003.0028
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This particular attempt at imagining a site of memory made of words may appear irreverent at first, but it has been crafted as an homage to a formidable woman: Jeanne Duval. I have taken the liberty ...
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This particular attempt at imagining a site of memory made of words may appear irreverent at first, but it has been crafted as an homage to a formidable woman: Jeanne Duval. I have taken the liberty of fictionalizing a first-person narrator who will talk about ‘herself’, at the risk of usurping her voice and her identity. Jeanne (whose name was or was not Duval) was a woman of colour and she had a long-term turbulent relationship with the enfant terrible of French nineteenth-century poetry, Charles Baudelaire. As a result, historical accounts both magnify and marginalize her. Trying to do justice to a historical character who was so much more than a muse but may not have been happy to embrace the role of exemplary black foremother, this text puts together the numerous and often incompatible portraits of Jeanne Duval. She appears and disappears in biographies (Emmanuel Richon), novels (Fabienne Pasquet), short stories (Angela Carter), academic studies (Claude Pichois). She is both present and absent, celebrated and erased in the so-called ‘Black Venus cycle’ of Baudelaire’s Flower of Evil as well as in paintings by Edouard Manet (Baudelaire’s Mistress, Reclining) and Gustave Courbet (The Painter’s Studio). The objective was to question the process of memorialization that might silence or appropriate her instead of providing her with a safe space of memory. It remains to be seen to what extent Jeanne is here celebrated or betrayed.Less
This particular attempt at imagining a site of memory made of words may appear irreverent at first, but it has been crafted as an homage to a formidable woman: Jeanne Duval. I have taken the liberty of fictionalizing a first-person narrator who will talk about ‘herself’, at the risk of usurping her voice and her identity. Jeanne (whose name was or was not Duval) was a woman of colour and she had a long-term turbulent relationship with the enfant terrible of French nineteenth-century poetry, Charles Baudelaire. As a result, historical accounts both magnify and marginalize her. Trying to do justice to a historical character who was so much more than a muse but may not have been happy to embrace the role of exemplary black foremother, this text puts together the numerous and often incompatible portraits of Jeanne Duval. She appears and disappears in biographies (Emmanuel Richon), novels (Fabienne Pasquet), short stories (Angela Carter), academic studies (Claude Pichois). She is both present and absent, celebrated and erased in the so-called ‘Black Venus cycle’ of Baudelaire’s Flower of Evil as well as in paintings by Edouard Manet (Baudelaire’s Mistress, Reclining) and Gustave Courbet (The Painter’s Studio). The objective was to question the process of memorialization that might silence or appropriate her instead of providing her with a safe space of memory. It remains to be seen to what extent Jeanne is here celebrated or betrayed.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Instead of trying to build the Cycle from its many fragments, Magnum Opus examines the center of the Cycle and evaluates not so much how O’Neill started with the project, but how he finished. Staged ...
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Instead of trying to build the Cycle from its many fragments, Magnum Opus examines the center of the Cycle and evaluates not so much how O’Neill started with the project, but how he finished. Staged together for the first time, back to back, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions could exhaust the subjects of greed and materialism and offer solutions for the times in which people live today. Sara Melody Harford’s trajectory invites an audience to confront her questions as its own: What is enough to survive and be happy? How much is enough? And, most important, when is enough enough? O’Neill repeatedly poses these questions for his audience to consider its position in a capitalist economy.Less
Instead of trying to build the Cycle from its many fragments, Magnum Opus examines the center of the Cycle and evaluates not so much how O’Neill started with the project, but how he finished. Staged together for the first time, back to back, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions could exhaust the subjects of greed and materialism and offer solutions for the times in which people live today. Sara Melody Harford’s trajectory invites an audience to confront her questions as its own: What is enough to survive and be happy? How much is enough? And, most important, when is enough enough? O’Neill repeatedly poses these questions for his audience to consider its position in a capitalist economy.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter debunks myths about the alleged destruction of the Cycle. When, for example, Carlotta O’Neill dramatized the burning of her husband’s work in an interview with the New York Times in ...
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This chapter debunks myths about the alleged destruction of the Cycle. When, for example, Carlotta O’Neill dramatized the burning of her husband’s work in an interview with the New York Times in 1956, she already had More Stately Mansions in her possession. Her clever allusions to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler fooled the press and focused on the means of destruction and not the matter. The analogy between Eilert Løvborg’s brilliant manuscript on the future in Ibsen’s play, burned in Hedda’s stove, and O’Neill’s prophetic history plays, supposedly burned at the Shelton Hotel in Boston, props up credibility for the latter as lost masterworks. But of the proposed eleven-play Cycle, O’Neill did not finish the first four plays about Deborah and the Blessed Sisters. And he did not complete the last five plays about the four brothers, either. He wrote two plays, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions, the heart of the whole thing. Unlike Løvborg’s manuscript, what O’Neill actually completed is not lost and still exists.Less
This chapter debunks myths about the alleged destruction of the Cycle. When, for example, Carlotta O’Neill dramatized the burning of her husband’s work in an interview with the New York Times in 1956, she already had More Stately Mansions in her possession. Her clever allusions to Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler fooled the press and focused on the means of destruction and not the matter. The analogy between Eilert Løvborg’s brilliant manuscript on the future in Ibsen’s play, burned in Hedda’s stove, and O’Neill’s prophetic history plays, supposedly burned at the Shelton Hotel in Boston, props up credibility for the latter as lost masterworks. But of the proposed eleven-play Cycle, O’Neill did not finish the first four plays about Deborah and the Blessed Sisters. And he did not complete the last five plays about the four brothers, either. He wrote two plays, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions, the heart of the whole thing. Unlike Løvborg’s manuscript, what O’Neill actually completed is not lost and still exists.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
O’Neill definitively completed A Touch of the Poet and composed a fourth and final draft for that expressed purpose in 1942. The status of More Stately Mansions is more problematic. Scholars have ...
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O’Neill definitively completed A Touch of the Poet and composed a fourth and final draft for that expressed purpose in 1942. The status of More Stately Mansions is more problematic. Scholars have mostly concluded that O’Neill meant to destroy the play and only inadvertently sent the original typescript to Yale as part of his archive. Although O’Neill labeled the play “unfinished,” evidence from the typescript, supported by O’Neill’s Work Diary and Carlotta’s personal diary proves Martha Gilman Bower’s thesis that More Stately Mansions is fully revised and whole. O’Neill wrote in longhand and Carlotta typed an extremely lengthy drama during an intense and dynamic period of a little less than one year. In the 1980s, Bower collated O’Neill’s handwritten edits with Carlotta’s much-revised typescript to create a master text—one that Carlotta would have produced if she had typed the entire 279-page manuscript yet again. Yale University Press published Bower’s unexpurgated version of More Stately Mansions with A Touch of the Poet in 2004. The 568 pages of a single volume reveal the substantial remains of the Cycle.Less
O’Neill definitively completed A Touch of the Poet and composed a fourth and final draft for that expressed purpose in 1942. The status of More Stately Mansions is more problematic. Scholars have mostly concluded that O’Neill meant to destroy the play and only inadvertently sent the original typescript to Yale as part of his archive. Although O’Neill labeled the play “unfinished,” evidence from the typescript, supported by O’Neill’s Work Diary and Carlotta’s personal diary proves Martha Gilman Bower’s thesis that More Stately Mansions is fully revised and whole. O’Neill wrote in longhand and Carlotta typed an extremely lengthy drama during an intense and dynamic period of a little less than one year. In the 1980s, Bower collated O’Neill’s handwritten edits with Carlotta’s much-revised typescript to create a master text—one that Carlotta would have produced if she had typed the entire 279-page manuscript yet again. Yale University Press published Bower’s unexpurgated version of More Stately Mansions with A Touch of the Poet in 2004. The 568 pages of a single volume reveal the substantial remains of the Cycle.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Sara Melody Harford emerges as the protagonist of A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions when the two plays are considered in sequence as one event. Cornelius Melody may be the star of the ...
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Sara Melody Harford emerges as the protagonist of A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions when the two plays are considered in sequence as one event. Cornelius Melody may be the star of the former play, but his wake begins the latter. Simon Harford, Sara’s husband, appears to be the central character in More Stately Mansions, but he is only an offstage character in A Touch of the Poet. Only Sara appears as a principal in both plays, and she embodies O’Neill’s theme that greed and materialism destroyed the promise of America. Her story, not Con’s, and certainly not Simon’s, who, among other things, is decidedly not Irish, personifies the title of the proposed Cycle: “A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed.” An Irish immigrant and member of an oppressed class and ethnic group, Sara determines to rise and make it socially and economically in America through marriage to a rich Yankee. She also wants to wipe the sneer against her father from her prospective mother-in-law’s face.Less
Sara Melody Harford emerges as the protagonist of A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions when the two plays are considered in sequence as one event. Cornelius Melody may be the star of the former play, but his wake begins the latter. Simon Harford, Sara’s husband, appears to be the central character in More Stately Mansions, but he is only an offstage character in A Touch of the Poet. Only Sara appears as a principal in both plays, and she embodies O’Neill’s theme that greed and materialism destroyed the promise of America. Her story, not Con’s, and certainly not Simon’s, who, among other things, is decidedly not Irish, personifies the title of the proposed Cycle: “A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed.” An Irish immigrant and member of an oppressed class and ethnic group, Sara determines to rise and make it socially and economically in America through marriage to a rich Yankee. She also wants to wipe the sneer against her father from her prospective mother-in-law’s face.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
O’Neill spent considerable time and effort to draft an elaborate Harford family tree in July 1937. This schematic revealed what he had done to that point, as well as the future direction of the Cycle ...
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O’Neill spent considerable time and effort to draft an elaborate Harford family tree in July 1937. This schematic revealed what he had done to that point, as well as the future direction of the Cycle as it spanned almost 180 years of American history. A Touch of the Poet references the past and the four Cycle plays that O’Neill did not finish, going back in time to before the American Revolution. More Stately Mansions forecasts the future of the Cycle with its representations of the Harford sons as young boys: Ethan, Wolfe, Jonathan, and Honey. Each has his own dream, each his own sense of destiny and happiness, but each wants to make his parents happy and proud as well. In the final five plays that O’Neill ultimately abandoned, beginning with The Calms of Capricorn, each son meets an inglorious fate. O’Neill planned to have Honey, aged 100 years, wrap up the Cycle by saying that the greed of humanity would never end. O’Neill had already said as much, though, with the two completed middle plays.Less
O’Neill spent considerable time and effort to draft an elaborate Harford family tree in July 1937. This schematic revealed what he had done to that point, as well as the future direction of the Cycle as it spanned almost 180 years of American history. A Touch of the Poet references the past and the four Cycle plays that O’Neill did not finish, going back in time to before the American Revolution. More Stately Mansions forecasts the future of the Cycle with its representations of the Harford sons as young boys: Ethan, Wolfe, Jonathan, and Honey. Each has his own dream, each his own sense of destiny and happiness, but each wants to make his parents happy and proud as well. In the final five plays that O’Neill ultimately abandoned, beginning with The Calms of Capricorn, each son meets an inglorious fate. O’Neill planned to have Honey, aged 100 years, wrap up the Cycle by saying that the greed of humanity would never end. O’Neill had already said as much, though, with the two completed middle plays.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
O’Neill invoked the phrase “stripped stark naked” to describe the desired effect in The Iceman Cometh, but he actually used that same phrase, and several other similar iterations, in the immediately ...
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O’Neill invoked the phrase “stripped stark naked” to describe the desired effect in The Iceman Cometh, but he actually used that same phrase, and several other similar iterations, in the immediately preceding Cycle plays, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions. Although the Cycle plays seem to set up what happens in O’Neill’s “dive” play that followed, they function differently. Sara Melody Harford, the protagonist, sinks almost as low as the derelicts at Hope’s bar, but she does not stay sunk. Her husband, Simon, strips her naked, literally and figuratively, but she rejects the humiliation and transforms the violence into a purification rite. Sara sins against herself and her husband due to her passionate and greedy nature, but, unlike the characters in The Iceman Cometh, she redeems what she has done in the act of love. The Cycle dramatizes compulsive behavior; The Iceman Cometh showcases the art of denial.Less
O’Neill invoked the phrase “stripped stark naked” to describe the desired effect in The Iceman Cometh, but he actually used that same phrase, and several other similar iterations, in the immediately preceding Cycle plays, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions. Although the Cycle plays seem to set up what happens in O’Neill’s “dive” play that followed, they function differently. Sara Melody Harford, the protagonist, sinks almost as low as the derelicts at Hope’s bar, but she does not stay sunk. Her husband, Simon, strips her naked, literally and figuratively, but she rejects the humiliation and transforms the violence into a purification rite. Sara sins against herself and her husband due to her passionate and greedy nature, but, unlike the characters in The Iceman Cometh, she redeems what she has done in the act of love. The Cycle dramatizes compulsive behavior; The Iceman Cometh showcases the art of denial.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
O’Neill felt certain that the play as written, not as performed, was the thing and wrote for posterity and not for the ephemeral applause of a theatrical production. The extensive dialogue, elaborate ...
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O’Neill felt certain that the play as written, not as performed, was the thing and wrote for posterity and not for the ephemeral applause of a theatrical production. The extensive dialogue, elaborate stage directions, and explanations and descriptions of scenes and characters, including the actual thoughts of characters in a pivotal scene, attempted to create a theatrical event for the reader that would surpass the experience in an actual theatrical space. The sheer amount of text that O’Neill produced in his desire to complete his theatrical vision in literary form belied the problem he attempted to solve in the Cycle. He endeavored to show how thoughts and feelings reinforced and contradicted each other simultaneously and not sequentially, but the narrative form of writing piled up word after word. Despite O’Neill’s novelistic impulses, he needed a theatrical space to fulfill his visions. The Cycle, two plays as one event, still awaits its premiere production.Less
O’Neill felt certain that the play as written, not as performed, was the thing and wrote for posterity and not for the ephemeral applause of a theatrical production. The extensive dialogue, elaborate stage directions, and explanations and descriptions of scenes and characters, including the actual thoughts of characters in a pivotal scene, attempted to create a theatrical event for the reader that would surpass the experience in an actual theatrical space. The sheer amount of text that O’Neill produced in his desire to complete his theatrical vision in literary form belied the problem he attempted to solve in the Cycle. He endeavored to show how thoughts and feelings reinforced and contradicted each other simultaneously and not sequentially, but the narrative form of writing piled up word after word. Despite O’Neill’s novelistic impulses, he needed a theatrical space to fulfill his visions. The Cycle, two plays as one event, still awaits its premiere production.
Zander Brietzke
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780300248470
- eISBN:
- 9780300258301
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300248470.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
O’Neill’s wordiness invites a theatrical reinterpretation with bold gestures and design elements to replace inordinate amounts of text. The final chapter nods at O’Neill’s cycle of one-act sea plays ...
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O’Neill’s wordiness invites a theatrical reinterpretation with bold gestures and design elements to replace inordinate amounts of text. The final chapter nods at O’Neill’s cycle of one-act sea plays early in his career, as well as to the fine film adaptation by John Ford in 1940, The Long Voyage Home, to suggest ways that such a production might be done. Martha Gilman Bower’s unexpurgated version provides the text for a new adaptation that unfolds around Sara. The six hours that it would take to perform A Touch of the Poet and a re-edited version of More Stately Mansions qualify as, in a term phrased by Jonathan Kalb, “marathon theater.” Like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the first part of O’Neill’s epic is better known than the second. But surely an audience deserves to see how Sara responds to the death of her father, a marriage proposal, children, the Harford mansion as her home, and a very jealous mother-in-law. Time draws nigh for the great work of the Cycle to begin.Less
O’Neill’s wordiness invites a theatrical reinterpretation with bold gestures and design elements to replace inordinate amounts of text. The final chapter nods at O’Neill’s cycle of one-act sea plays early in his career, as well as to the fine film adaptation by John Ford in 1940, The Long Voyage Home, to suggest ways that such a production might be done. Martha Gilman Bower’s unexpurgated version provides the text for a new adaptation that unfolds around Sara. The six hours that it would take to perform A Touch of the Poet and a re-edited version of More Stately Mansions qualify as, in a term phrased by Jonathan Kalb, “marathon theater.” Like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, the first part of O’Neill’s epic is better known than the second. But surely an audience deserves to see how Sara responds to the death of her father, a marriage proposal, children, the Harford mansion as her home, and a very jealous mother-in-law. Time draws nigh for the great work of the Cycle to begin.
Marisa Galvez
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226693217
- eISBN:
- 9780226693491
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226693491.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The chapter analyzes Lancelot as an unrepentant crusader in the prose romance Perlesvaus: Lancelot is represented as a crusader who advances the New Law despite lacking access to the Grail as in the ...
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The chapter analyzes Lancelot as an unrepentant crusader in the prose romance Perlesvaus: Lancelot is represented as a crusader who advances the New Law despite lacking access to the Grail as in the Vulgate Cycle; further, in a confessional scene with a hermit, he is explicitly depicted as unrepentant for his sin of loving Guinevere. The Perlesvaus develops the potential of Lancelot seen in lyric. Without deflating the lyrical suspension of the lover caught between earthly and spiritual models of chivalry, it extends his professional avowal by asking how his competing loves for God and the lady can be sustained through a romance that advocates holy warfare. Placing Lancelot and the Perlesvaus within the context of other romances, the chapter argues that Lancelot’s unrepentance and his status as a crusader without complete conversion speaks the idiom. The chapter ends by explaining how an unrepentant Lancelot serves as an ethical model for nobility, such as Jean de Nesle, a patron of the romance.Less
The chapter analyzes Lancelot as an unrepentant crusader in the prose romance Perlesvaus: Lancelot is represented as a crusader who advances the New Law despite lacking access to the Grail as in the Vulgate Cycle; further, in a confessional scene with a hermit, he is explicitly depicted as unrepentant for his sin of loving Guinevere. The Perlesvaus develops the potential of Lancelot seen in lyric. Without deflating the lyrical suspension of the lover caught between earthly and spiritual models of chivalry, it extends his professional avowal by asking how his competing loves for God and the lady can be sustained through a romance that advocates holy warfare. Placing Lancelot and the Perlesvaus within the context of other romances, the chapter argues that Lancelot’s unrepentance and his status as a crusader without complete conversion speaks the idiom. The chapter ends by explaining how an unrepentant Lancelot serves as an ethical model for nobility, such as Jean de Nesle, a patron of the romance.
