Staging depth : Eugene O'Neill and the politics of psychological discourse / Joel Pfister.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Pfister, Joel.

Series:

• Cultural studies of the United States.
• Cultural studies of the United States Staging depth

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• O'Neill, Eugene, 1888-1953--Knowledge--Psychology.
• Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.
• Domestic drama, American--History and criticism.
• Middle class in literature.
• Psychology in literature.
• Families in literature.
• Drama--Psychological aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 327 p. : ill.)

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c1995.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Pfister examines the history of the middle-class family and of Freudian pop psychology in the 1910's and 1920's to reconstruct the cultural conditions for the imagining and popularizing of "depth", a trope that was central to O'Neill's dramatic vision.

Contents:

• Foreword / Alan Trachtenberg
• Introduction: The Profession of "Depth"
• 1. Beyond Biography. O'Neill and the Making of the Psychological Family. The Psychological Dyad in the "Land of the Mother Complex" The Historicity of Ambivalence
• 2. "Depth" As a Mass-Cultural Category. Pop Psychology, the Professional-Managerial Class, and the Aesthetic of Depth. The Therapeutic Playwright and Therapeutic Theatre. The Production of "Psychological" Common Sense for the Professional-Managerial Class. The Psychological as a Political and Historical Category. O'Neill's Critique of Psychological Discourse and Iceman
• 3. The Ideological Work of "Depth" O'Neill and the American Left. Workers, Race, and Psychological Primitives. O'Neill and the Anarchist-Feminist Critique of Personal Life. The Propaganda of "Life" O'Neill, the Left, and Social Depth. Ah Wilderness! and the Reproduction of the Middle Class. Possessors, Self-dispossessed
• 4. The Trappings of Theatre, Gender, and Desire.

Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

• 9798890886842
• 9780585026497
• 0585026491
• 9780807863855
• 0807863858