This work analyses the American family in context of society and its demands. It focuses on the cannonical works of the Modern American drama, namely plays of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and David Mamet. The playwrights are analysed in two distinctive groups according to similar themes they share. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller depict the family under increasing pressure from the outside as well from the inside. The unit disintegrates, members of the family escape and thus the unit loses its funtions. The pressure is imposed by the tenets of the American mythology that governs the society, which, in turn, influences the family. The common theme of the first group of playwrights is the feeling of loss. This comprises of two dimensions - spatial and tempoval. The second group of playwrights share the same theme of loss with its spatial and temporal implications. They are characteristic by their distinctive use of language that depicts the prevalent sense of doom, apocalypse, futility and sterility. The search for identity is also implied by the restlessness of characters. The detrimental effect of harsh business environment on the family is explored with regards to masculinity. The work shows the family in the context of the 1950s, an era when the family was elevated to...

This paper results from an investigation of translation activities in Swahili literature during late pre-colonial and early colonial times. In detail, the paper addresses questions on how, for some specific groups, the choice to translate from particular languages and cultures – or even the choice to not translate at all – was related both to practices of accumulation of prestige and power and to practices of identity construction. Textual analysis, together with the inclusion of cultural-historical facts (contextual analysis), allows a comparison between the nature of literary and extra-literary discourses and therefore uncovers specific patterns underneath translation practices from the 18th until early 20th century. The objective of this study is to emphasise the link between the exercise of power and production of culture, «[…] of which production of translation is part.» (Bassnett & Lefevere 1990: 5), and thus to configure translated literature as playing an active role in Swahili literary and cultural system.