Hugo Von Hofmannsthal

<p>Since World War II  Hugo von Hofmannsthal has regained his place as a classic of modern  European literature.  The translations collected here-Death and the  Fool Electra and The Tower represent different periods and interests in his career as a dramatist. Yet as the critical introduction on Hofmannsthal's tragic theater indicates all three plays written in different theatrical idioms reveal a unified and developing conception of man's estate in the modern world.  <br /><br />Hofmannsthal rejected the current fashions of the modern stage but was  nonetheless a keen observer of his time. His deliberate indebtedness to  the great theaters of the past allowed him to enlarge the scope of his  own dramaturgy and to use a more articulate language than that afforded  by the conventions of the modern realistic theater.<br /><br />This book includes the 1927 theater version of Hofmannsthal's last great work The Tower available for the first time in English translation.</p>