The Death of the Playwright Modern British Drama and Literary Theory [Hardcover]

The nine essays in this volume make significant contributions to the development of contemporary literary theory and demonstrate how a range of new approaches can be applied to modern British drama. In addressing the questions of power, subjectivity, sexuality, psychoanalysis, and the nature of the dramatic text, the contributors reveal how much modern drama can be re-read to discover its radically subversive characteristics. Their conclusions challenge accepted interpretations and suggest major revisions of the processes of understanding and staging drama.Preface - Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction - 'The World Made Flesh': Women and Theatre; J.Thompson - Popular Drama and Realism: the Case of Television; C.Pawling & T.Perkins - Shelagh Delaney's 'A Taste of Honey' as Serious Text: a Semiotic Reading; E.J.Esche - The Eye of Judgement: Samuel Beckett's Later Drama; A.McMullan - Bakhtin, Beckett, Foucault, Pinter; P.Griffith - Forms of Dissent in Contemporary Drama and Contemporary Theory; R.Rylance - An Age of Surfaces: Joe Orton's Drama and Poststructuralism; A.Page - The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Essays in Refusal; J.Thomas - Staging the Other: a Psychoanalytic Approach to Contemporary Political Drama; W.J.Wheeler & T.R.Griffiths - Select Bibliography - Index