Understanding Friedrich Dürrenmatt / Roger A. Crockett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Crockett, Roger A. (Roger Alan), 1947-

Series:

Understanding modern European and Latin American literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich--Criticism and interpretation.

Dürrenmatt, Friedrich.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xxi, 220 pages.

Place of Publication:

Columbia : University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

Summary:

Roger A. Crockett's comprehensive overview of Friedrich Durrenmatt's dramatic and narrative oeuvre reveals the international importance of the Swiss playwright. Durrenmatt gained fame beyond the Swiss borders in the early 1950s with the serialized detective novel The Judge and His Hangman and a series of radio dramas. His worldwide acclaim, however, rests largely on two dramas that have been canonized and anthologized as twentieth-century classics of the world stage: The Visit (1956) and The Physicist (1962).

In Understanding Friedrich Durrenmatt, Crockett treats the acclaimed masterworks as well as the failures, following Durrenmatt's conviction that the latter are often as revealing about an author as the former. In addition to his thorough appraisal of Durrenmatt's dramatic canon, Crockett provides careful readings of the dramatist's prose works.

Contents:

Biography

Earliest prose and dramatic works

The turn to comedy

Three detective stories

Two plays about ideologies and God's remoteness

The radio plays

Consolation from Dürrenmatt

The corruption of justice

Of heroism, failure, and resignation

Improbable grace

The adaptations

Four that failed: the late plays

The prose of the 1970s and 1980s

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 204-214) and index.

ISBN:

1570032130

OCLC:

37725459