Intertextuality in American Drama

The new essays in this collection, on such diverse writers as Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Maurine Dallas Watkins, Sophie Treadwell, and Washington Irving, fill an important conceptual gap. The essayists offer numerous approaches to intertextuality: the influence of the poetry of romanticism and Shakespeare and of histories and novels, ideological and political discourses on American playwrights, unlikely connections between such writers as Miller and Wilder, the problems of intertexts in translation, the evolution in historical and performance contexts of the same tale, and the relationships among feminism, the drama of the courtroom, and the drama of the stage.
Intertextuality has been an under-explored area in studies of dramatic and performance texts. The innovative findings of these scholars testify to the continuing vitality of research in American drama and performance.

Drew Eisenhauer is a lecturer for Coventry University abroad and a teacher of English at Lycée International Bossuet in Meaux, France. He has authored numerous articles on modern American drama. A recent recipient of the Mayor of Paris Research in Paris fellowship, he lives in Paris.
Brenda Murphy is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She has published 16 books and a wide range of articles that reflect her interest in American drama, literature and culture. She lives in Windham, Connecticut.

Edited by Drew Eisenhauer and Brenda Murphy
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 268
Bibliographic Info: 3 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6391-6
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0140-3
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Introduction: What Is “Intertextuality” and Why Is the Term

Important Today?  Drew Eisenhauer 1

Part I: Literary Intertextuality

Section One: Poets

The Ancient Mariner and O’Neill’s Intertextual Epiphany

(Herman Daniel Farrell III) 10

“Deep in my silent sea”: Eugene O’Neill’s Extended

Adaptation of Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner

(Rupendra Guha Majumdar) 25

A Multi-Faceted Moon: Shakespearean and Keatsian Echoes

in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten

(Aurélie Sanchez) 36

Trailing Clouds of Glory: Glaspell, Romantic Ideology

and Cultural Conflict in Modern American Literature

(Michael Winetsky) 52

On Closets and Graves: Intertextualities in Susan Glaspell’s

Alison’s House and Emily Dickinson’s Poetry

(Noelia Hernando-Real) 63

Section Two: Playwrights and Performance Texts

The Tragic Heroine: An Intertextual Study of Thornton Wilder’s Women in The Skin of Our Teeth, The Long Christmas Dinner,

and Our Town (Kristin Bennett) 76

“Cut Out the Town and You Will Cut Out the Poetry”:

Thornton Wilder and Arthur Miller (Stephen Marino) 90

“And I am changed too”: Irving’s Rip Van Winkle from Page

to Stage (Jason Shaffer) 99

Part II: Cultural Intertextuality

Section Three: Cultural Texts

Looking for Herland: Embodying the Search for Utopia in

Susan Glaspell’s The Verge (Franklin J. Lasik) 114

Intertextuality on the Frontier in Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors

(Sarah Withers) 126

Fighting Archangels: The Deus Absconditus in Eugene

O’Neill’s Dialogue with the Bible, Nietzsche and Jung

(Annalisa Brugnoli) 142

Intertextual Insanities in Susan Glaspell’s The Verge

(Emeline Jouve) 154

Section Four: Cultural Context

Female Playwrights, Female Killers: Intersecting Texts

of Crime and Gender in Glaspell, Watkins and Treadwell

(Lisa Hall Hagen) 169

A “Psalm” for Its Time: History, Memory and Nostalgia in

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (Jeffrey Eric Jenkins) 188

Rain in an Actually Strange City: Translating and Re-Situating

the Universality of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

(Ramón Espejo Romero) 205

“Doorways” and “Blank Spaces”: Intertextual Connection in

John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (Graham Wolfe) 217

“What there is behind us”: Susan Glaspell’s Challenge

to Nativist Discourse in Stage Adaptations of Her Harper’s

Monthly Fiction (Sharon Friedman) 232

About the Contributors 253

Index 25