Vast Encyclopedia

This comprehensive detailed study of Wilder''s entire dramatic oeuvre is the only one to place the works in their broad aesthetic and philosophical context and to integrate literary analysis of the plays with interpretation of their theatrical techniques. Its sources include Gilbert Harrison''s authorized 1983 biography of the dramatist and the published selections from Wilder''s journals for the years 1939-1961 as well as unpublished materialletters diaries and notesin the Yale Collection of American Literature Wilder papers. Lifton discusses the symbolist naturalist expressionist Brechtian futurist Pirandellian and existentialist elements in Wilder''s plays as well as parallels between Wilder''s theatre and that of such diverse cultures as the classical Greek and Roman medieval European Elizabethan Renaissance Spanish Japanese and Chinese.