Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and TragedyWithin little more than three years of the opening of his first successful play on Broadway, Eugene O'Neill endured the deaths of his father, mother, and brother. These devastating losses plunged the young playwright into a period of guilt and profound mourning that consumed two decades of his life. In this enlightening critical biography, deeply informed by the insights of psychoanalysis, Stephen Black presents a new understanding of Eugene O'Neill's life (1888-1953), from his troubled childhood and adolescence through a glacially slow period of mourning for his family to his ultimate emergence from the preoccupation with grief and loss that had pervaded his life and his writings. Black argues that O'Neill consciously and deliberately used playwriting as a medium of self-psychoanalysis--an endeavor that led to the creation of some of the finest American plays ever written and, eventually, to a successful therapeutic outcome. Through close analysis of O'Neill's plays and literary writings, some five thousand surviving letters, other personal documents, and accounts of people who knew him, Black reaches new conclusions about important aspects of the playwright's life and work. He follows the slow course of O'Neill's mourning by studying the many grieving characters in O'Neill's plays, and when at last the playwright accepts his losses and moves on, his characters do likewise. The changed tone and form of O'Neill's final plays, including Hughie and A Moon for the Misbegotten, reflect the playwright's psychological and artistic growth and his hard-won victory over mourning and tragedy. |
Contents
FOUR | 44 |
The World Discovered and Rejected 18951902 59 | 59 |
Growing Up at School and on the Streets 19021907 76 | 76 |
SEVEN | 107 |
A Stroll on the Bottom of the Sea 1912 117 | 117 |
EIGHT | 128 |
In Love in New London and Cambridge | 157 |
ELEVEN | 211 |
SEVENTEEN | 334 |
EIGHTEEN | 353 |
TWENTY | 375 |
Into the Summerhouse 19351939 394 | 394 |
TWENTYONE | 414 |
TWENTYTWO | 436 |
TWENTYTHREE | 456 |
TWENTYFOUR | 470 |
TWELVE | 237 |
THIRTEEN | 261 |
FOURTEEN | 281 |
FIFTEEN | 296 |
SIXTEEN | 319 |
TWENTYFIVE | 483 |
CONTENTS | 485 |
The Long Voyage Home 19471953 491 | 491 |
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actor addiction Agnes Boulton Anna Christie become began believed brother Carlotta CELEBRANT OF LOSS character child Chris Cycle Cynthia daughter Days Without End dead death Deborah depression diary draft drinking early Edmund Ella O'Neill Ella's Emperor Jones Erie Eugene Jr Eugene O'Neill Eugene wrote Eugene's father feel felt finished gave Gelbs gene George Jean Nathan guilt Harry Weinberger Hickey Hughie husband Iceman Cometh idea James O'Neill Jamie Jamie's Journey into Night knew late later learned letters lived Long Day's Journey LONG VOYAGE HOME Louise lovers Mansions marriage married Mary Monte Cristo morphine mother mourning Mourning Becomes Electra never Oona parents Parritt play playwright Poet Provincetown returned Rippin Sara Saxe seems sexual Shane shows Simon story Strange Interlude summer SUMMERHOUSE theater things thought told Sheaffer took TRAGEDY tremor tried Tyrone wanted wife woman writing York