Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, General Literature and Rhetoric, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. List of figures shows incorrect page numbers. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 670-720).

O objetivo desta dissertação é questionar a legitimidade de convicções sexuais e de gênero profundamente arraigadas, através da análise de M. Butterfly de David Henry Hwang e Cat on a Hot Tin Roof de Tennessee Williams. Argüindo a respeito do determinismo biológico imposto e do sistema binário restritivo, eu tento testar o valor e o significado de antigos dualismos construídos, tais como mentira e verdade, masculino e feminino. Nesta tarefa, sou auxiliada pela existência de personagens enriquecedores como Brick Pollitt, Maggie, René Gallimard e Song Liling, cujas subjetividades são centrais para minha dissertação. Enquanto os dois primeiros são cruciais para a discussão sobre a mentira, os outros são fundamentais para exemplificar as possibilidades de sexualidades e expressões de gênero transgressoras / The purpose of this thesis is to question the legitimacy of deeply rooted sexual and gender beliefs through the analysis of both David Hwangs M. Butterfly and Tennessee Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Being inquisitive regarding the imposed biological determinism and the restrictive binary system, I try to test the value and the meaning of ancient constructed dualisms such as mendacity and truth, masculine and feminine. In this ask, I am supported by the existence of enriching characters like Brick Pollitt, Maggie, Rene Gallimard and Song Liling, whose subjectivities are the core of my thesis. While the two first are crucial for the discussion on mendacity, the others are fundamental to exemplify possibilities of transgressive sexualities and gender expressions.

O objetivo desta dissertação é questionar a legitimidade de convicções sexuais e de gênero profundamente arraigadas, através da análise de M. Butterfly de David Henry Hwang e Cat on a Hot Tin Roof de Tennessee Williams. Argüindo a respeito do determinismo biológico imposto e do sistema binário restritivo, eu tento testar o valor e o significado de antigos dualismos construídos, tais como mentira e verdade, masculino e feminino. Nesta tarefa, sou auxiliada pela existência de personagens enriquecedores como Brick Pollitt, Maggie, René Gallimard e Song Liling, cujas subjetividades são centrais para minha dissertação. Enquanto os dois primeiros são cruciais para a discussão sobre a mentira, os outros são fundamentais para exemplificar as possibilidades de sexualidades e expressões de gênero transgressoras / The purpose of this thesis is to question the legitimacy of deeply rooted sexual and gender beliefs through the analysis of both David Hwangs M. Butterfly and Tennessee Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Being inquisitive regarding the imposed biological determinism and the restrictive binary system, I try to test the value and the meaning of ancient constructed dualisms such as mendacity and truth, masculine and feminine. In this ask, I am supported by the existence of enriching characters like Brick Pollitt, Maggie, Rene Gallimard and Song Liling, whose subjectivities are the core of my thesis. While the two first are crucial for the discussion on mendacity, the others are fundamental to exemplify possibilities of transgressive sexualities and gender expressions.

The dissertation undertakes an analysis of the dramatic literature engendered by the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, and illustrates how the dramas of that period reflect the stresses and anxieties that assailed contemporary American society. It investigates the formative influences on the drama, the various styles in which it emerged, and the recurring themes and motifs. The thesis proceeds from the premise that the events of the 1960s fractured American society in a manner unknown since the Civil War. It demonstrates that the social, political, and intellectual divisiveness that characterized the society was interpreted in the theatre by dramatic metaphors of fragmentation of the individual and collective psyche, and that this fragmentation was reflected in characters who experienced a collective and individual sense of loss of cultural identity, cohesion and continuity. Included in the examination of the drama is a description of how the social upheaval of the period influenced playwrights to undertake a reassessment of American values and ethics, and to interpret in dramatic form the nature of the trauma of Vietnam for American society. The study includes a discussion of how individual and collective reality is based on cultural conditioning, and how the challenging of cultural myth in an extra-cultural milieu. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

A travers une étude interculturelle détaillée et comparée de la production théâtrale minoritaire canadienne et américaine, ma thèse cherche à mettre en lumière les les apports thématiques et esthétiques du théâtre multi-ethnicque nord-américain contemporain à la tradition anglo-américaine du 20ème siècle. Les communautés asiatiques, africaines et aborigènes sont retenues comme poste d'observation privilégié de l'expression esthétique de la condition multiculturelle postcoloniale dans le théâtre nord-américain de la période allant de 1972 à nos jours. Sur base d'un corpus de pièces de théâtre, ma recherche m'a permis de redéfinir les grandes articulations des notions d'hybridité, d'identité et de communauté/nation postcoloniale.<p><p>Through a detailed cross-cultural approach of the English Canadian and American minority theatrical production, my thesis aims to identify the thematic and aesthetic contributions of multi-ethnic North American drama to the Anglo-American tradition of the 20th century. My study examines North American drama from the vantage points of African, Asian, and Native communities from 1972 until today. Relying on a number of case studies, my research opened up new avenues for rethinking the notions of hybridity and identity in relation to the postcolonial community/nation. <p> / Doctorat en Langues et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Criado na cidade de Nova Iorque no início dos anos sessenta, o Bread & Puppet Theater estabeleceu-se em meio à vanguarda artística norte-americana do século XX, tornando-se célebre nas apresentações e paradas de rua em protesto contra a guerra do Vietnã. Quatro décadas de teatro mais tarde, em plena guerra no Iraque, o grupo dirigido por Peter Schumann, agora radicado em Vermont, prossegue com seu teatro de papel-maché, em protesto contra os impérios vis e injustos do mundo globalizado. Esta pesquisa compara o espetáculo Portões do Inferno, último \"Circo de Ressurreição Doméstica\" (1998), espetáculo anual apresentado a dezenas de milhares de pessoas, a O Mundo de Pernas para o Ar, uma nova versão do Circo - \"Circo de Insurreição do Primeiro Mundo\" (2004), analisando relações entre forma e história. Observaremos que, em nossa atual civilização, fundada na lógica da mercadoria, na comercialização da arte, na espetacularização da vida (no sentido debordiano), e no embrutecido e fragmentário deslumbramento pós-moderno frente aos mesmos paradigmas exaltados como inovações (ou no esmaecimento do afeto, na expressão de Jameson), o teatro histórico, épico e dialético do Bread and Puppet segue resistindo efetivamente, na contramão da sociedade de consumo, na insurreição contra o mundo globalizado, a insurreição \"da mente contra a supremacia do dinheiro e a insurreição de toda a alma do teatro de bonecos contra a estupidez do maravilhamento pós-moderno\". / Originated in the city of New York in the 1960s, the Bread & Puppet Theater established itself amidst the North American artistic vanguard of the 20th century. It was especially known for its demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam war. Four decades later, during the Iraq war, the group leaded by Peter Schumann, now established in Vermont, continues with their papier-maché theater, demonstrating and protesting against the evil and unfair empires of the globalized world. This study compares Gates of Hell (1998) - the final \"Domestic Resurrection Circus\"- an annual show presented to thousands of people, to Upside Down World - a new version of the circus called \"First World Insurrection Circus\" (2004) - analyzing the relationships between form and history. The analysis reveals that in our current civilization, which is largely based on the logic of commodities, in the commercialization of art, in the \"spectacularization\" of life (in debordian sense) and in the brutalized and fragmented post-modern wonderfulness, which presents and glorifies the same paradigms as innovations (or in its waning of affect, in Fredric Jameson\'s sense), Bread and Puppet\'s historical, epic and dialectic theater effectively resists, going the opposite direction of consumer society, in the insurrection against globalized world, the insurrection \"of the mind against the supremacy of money and the insurrection of the whole soul of puppetry against the stupidity of post-modern wonderfulness\".

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 Jun 15

This thesis explores the status of a specific subset of absent characters within twentieth century American drama. By borrowing the term “proximate cause” from tort law and illuminating its intricacies through David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, this thesis re-appropriates proximate cause for literary studies. Rather than focus on characters whose existence remains the subject of critical debate, this set of absent characters presumably exists but never appear onstage. Despite their non-appearance onstage, however, these absent characters nonetheless have a profound effect upon the action that occurs during their respective plays. Highlighting the various ways in which these characters serve as the proximate cause for the onstage action of a given play will expand the realm of drama and literary studies in myriad ways.

Most books written about American drama concern definitions of masculinity, the American dream, and the family in a society that encourages people to surpass their competences and limits. American playwrights of the twentieth century reveal the anxiety and insecurity of men who do not rise up to the standards of the American dream. In concentrating on these themes, most critics have analyzed the main characters and plots but have left aside hints about other myths. This study aims to analyse the extended use of the cowboy, of salesman, and of pirate in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The recurrence of these three myths touches on the core of American drama that playwrights and critics have tried to define endlessly: the definition of the male in the American society.