Journeyman's stage: Rehistoricizing O'Neill, his audience, and the American family in the 1920s
Longhofer, Julie Eakins
This item is only available for download by members of the University of Illinois community. Students, faculty, and staff at the U of I may log in with your NetID and password to view the item. If you are trying to access an Illinois-restricted dissertation or thesis, you can request a copy through your library's Inter-Library Loan office or purchase a copy directly from ProQuest.
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/19730
Description
Title
Journeyman's stage: Rehistoricizing O'Neill, his audience, and the American family in the 1920s
Author(s)
Longhofer, Julie Eakins
Issue Date
1996
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Hurt, James R.
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
History, United States
Theater
Literature, American
Language
eng
Abstract
The years between 1921 and 1934 were Eugene O'Neill's journeyman years, a time when the country's theatrical community, hungering after a national playwright, turned a spotlight on a good writer in hopes of finding a great one. The discursive interplay between the maturing playwright and his growing constituency--ardently supportive critics, equally passionate detractors, and a widening audience both in numbers and social classes--shaped both the young playwright and a burgeoning national art.
"After the manner of the New Historicism, I examine how the American theatre reproduces specific cultural values through the representations of the American family on stage. The First Man (1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), and Strange Interlude (1928) enact and debate revisionary family structures. Through conflicts over obstacles to reproduction, who will control reproduction, and what form the next generation will take, these plays challenge the status quo of the ""traditional"" American family in the 1920s. O'Neill's audiences responded vigorously to these conflicts--rejecting the unspeakably intimate (First Man), censoring the aggressively new (Desire), and fanatically embracing a therapeutic experience (Interlude)."
Through the vehicle of vested theatre audiences, these journeyman plays disseminated familial trends and participated in social change. Familial revisions intersect with a number of 1920s historical trends: the politics of obstetrics in the 1920s, pop anthropology, the popularization of Freud, sensational child murders (including the 1925 Leopold and Loeb trial), eugenics crusades, the legacies of Puritanism, and revisionary theologies (including Interlude's innovative mother-centered theology which parallels early revisionary Freudians like Melanie Klein).
My work focuses on the interplay between staged family conflicts and extra-literary cultural evolution. I examine newspaper reviews and other historical discourse (including a detailed analysis of the 1925 campaign to censor Desire Under the Elms) in order to discover why some of the plays' family structures were received with favor by audiences or critics, while others triggered controversy. This analysis demonstrates how the colloquy between stage and audience affected O'Neill's development and his audiences' attitudes toward their would-be national playwright.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
