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摘要
摘要
While the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki secured an American victory in the Pacific and hastened the end of World War II, it also ushered in an era of fear. When the Soviets developed an atomic bomb, the United States ceased to be the world's only nuclear power. Americans feared a nuclear attack by the Soviets, while the British worried about being drawn into a nuclear conflict for which they were utterly unprepared and particularly vulnerable. The threat of nuclear war left a lasting mark on the British and American imagination. Like other creative artists, playwrights began to grapple with the terrifying implications of a nuclear holocaust. This study reveals how English-speaking dramatists, both major and minor, reacted to the stunning events of the Atomic Age and the early thermonuclear era.
Moving from American to British responses, the book describes more than 25 plays and quotes a variety of reflections on the bombing of Japan, the evolution of the Cold War, the development of more and more refined atomic weapons, the proliferation of fallout shelters, and the occurrence of strategic crises, such as those in Suez, Berlin, and Cuba. The American plays are generally inferior to the British, with less experienced playwrights attacking a wide range of subject matter and experimenting with several dramatic styles. British plays more frequently protest the threatened imposition of an American-Soviet conflict upon their offshore island. The book concludes with a study of how Samuel Beckett's Endgame reflects a human dilemma distinctive to the Nuclear Age.
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Covering an unexamined aspect of theater and culture, Carpenter (author of two "international bibliographies," Modern Drama Scholarship and Criticism, 1966-1980, CH, Oct'86, and Modern Drama: Scholarship and Criticism, 1981-1990, CH, Dec'97) discusses every original (albeit minor) pre-1964, English-language play that focuses on a nuclear problem. For context, his first chapters discuss key nuclear events and Robert Nichols and Maurice Browne's Wings over Europe (1929). Subsequent chapters include details that illuminate an author's attitude or reaction, followed by analysis of specific dramas or discourse. Alternating chapters between US and British authors, Carpenter discusses playwrights confronting, first, the birth of the "atomic age" (the immediate post-Hiroshima period), including, among others, Herman Wouk's The Traitor and Marghanita Laski's The Offshore Island. She goes on to the early "thermonuclear era" (post-Hydrogen bomb), including Lorraine Hansberry's What Use Are Flowers? and works by Ray Bradbury and Doris Lessing, Robert Bolt, and David Campton. The final chapter focuses on the early 1960s private-fallout-shelter dilemma, beginning with Rod Serling's The Shelter from the television series The Twilight Zone. Carpenter concludes with a persuasive reading of Beckett's allusive Endgame, arguing that a Cold War audience might construe the play as a post-Holocaust predicament. Recommended for libraries supporting coursework in literature during the post-WW II era. J. C. Kohl; Dutchess Community College
目录
Personal Prologue | p. xi |
Acknowledgments | p. xv |
Introduction | p. 1 |
Chapter 1. A Context of Provocations: The Early Nuclear Age | p. 11 |
The Birth of the Atomic Age | p. 11 |
The Evolution of the Thermonuclear Era | p. 13 |
Closest to the Edge--and Beyond | p. 15 |
Chapter 2. A "Dramatic Extravaganza" of the Projected Atomic Age: Wings Over Europe (1928) | p. 19 |
Chapter 3. American Playwrights and the Birth of the Atomic Age | p. 27 |
Ridenour's Apocalyptic Playlet and Its Adaptation | p. 31 |
Flanagan's "Living Newspaper," E = mc[superscript 2] | p. 34 |
Sinclair's Naturalistic Thesis Drama, A Giant's Strength | p. 37 |
Wouk's Discursive Spy Melodrama, The Traitor | p. 42 |
Lengyel's Allegorical Fantasy, The Atom Clock | p. 47 |
Chapter 4. British Playwrights and the Birth of the Atomic Age | p. 53 |
Shaw's Reactions to the Birth of the Atomic Age | p. 55 |
Priestley's Summer Day's Dream: "Rousseau for the Atom-Age" | p. 60 |
Laski's Neglected Post-Holocaust Drama, The Offshore Island | p. 61 |
O'Casey's Evolving Reactions to the Atomic Age | p. 73 |
Chapter 5. American Playwrights in the Early Thermonuclear Era | p. 75 |
Oboler's Futuristic Fantasy, Night of the Auk | p. 79 |
Purkey's Theatricalist Fantasy, Hangs Over Thy Head | p. 81 |
Schary's Antinuclear Domestic Drama, The Highest Tree | p. 83 |
Feiffer's Fallout Shelter Farce, Crawling Arnold | p. 87 |
Hansberry's Post-Holocaust Fable, What Use Are Flowers? | p. 88 |
Bradbury's Post-Holocaust Parable, To the Chicago Abyss | p. 92 |
Chapter 6. British Playwrights in the Early Thermonuclear Era | p. 97 |
Playwrights and Antinuclear Protest | p. 100 |
Lessing's Each His Own Wilderness | p. 103 |
Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse | p. 106 |
Mercer's A Climate of Fear | p. 111 |
Kops's The Dream of Peter Mann | p. 112 |
Absurdist with a Social Conscience: David Campton | p. 115 |
Then... | p. 116 |
Out of the Flying Pan | p. 119 |
Mutatis Mutandis | p. 122 |
Little Brother: Little Sister | p. 126 |
Chapter 7. The Private Fallout Shelter Dilemma Dramatized: Rod Serling, Elaine Morgan--and Samuel Beckett? | p. 129 |
Serling's "Nightmare" Image of the Dilemma: The Shelter | p. 131 |
The Issue Debated in Morgan's Licence to Murder | p. 133 |
"All Those I Might Have Helped": Beckett's Endgame | p. 136 |
Notes | p. 145 |
Selective Bibliography of Background Works | p. 175 |
Index | p. 179 |