Impossible love: A study of the incest theme in the plays of Ibsen, O'Neill, and Shepard.
Item
-
Title
-
Impossible love: A study of the incest theme in the plays of Ibsen, O'Neill, and Shepard.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9325092
-
identifier
-
9325092
-
Creator
-
Fechter, Steven Jerome.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Harry Carlson
-
Date
-
1993
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Theater | Literature, American | Literature, Germanic
-
Abstract
-
One of the most pervasive and least understood themes in modern drama is the theme of incest. Three predominant dramatists of modern drama who have used the incest theme extensively in their works are Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, and Sam Shepard. Examining a selection of their plays illuminates the complex nature and far-reaching influence of this theme, both in text and in performance.;In Ibsen's Little Eyolf, Rosmersholm, and Ghosts, incest and incestuous desire are prominent symptoms of the emotional and psychological turmoil that his characters attempt to repress or, at least, contain. Furthermore, we observe the playwright's deep empathy for the child-victim, whose fate, and ultimate doom, is linked to the incestuous desire and consequent hypocrisy within these bourgeois homes. In Ibsen hands, incest becomes a weapon that annihilates not only "difference" in the family structure, but subverts the hierarchic foundations of a restrictive, patriarchal society.;In O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and A Moon for the Misbegotten, the incest theme is foregrounded by his characters' mysterious (and unconscious) search for and possession of the Great Mother. In their attempt to re-experience the sublime bond of mother and child the hero searches for the mother in nature, property, other women, and in death.;The families in Shepard's Buried Child and Fool for Love live in a dangerous, brutal landscape where parents and children, sibling and sibling are locked in bloody and confused Oedipal battles. The fathers live in a denatured world, where manhood and masculinity have become worthless, even poisonous; and the sons either carry on the father's poison, or, following the incestuous trail, destroy him.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
