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