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Churchill’s Socialism: Political Resistance in the Plays of Caryl Churchill
Author: Siân Adiseshiah
Date Of Publication: Oct 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1318-1
Isbn: 1-4438-1318-4
Although now celebrated as a world-leading playwright, Caryl Churchill has received little attention for her socialism, which has been frequently overlooked in favour of emphasising gendered identities and postmodernist themes. Churchill’s Socialism examines eight of Churchill’s plays with reference to socialist theories and political movements. This well-researched and dynamic new book reframes Churchill’s work, positioning her plays within socialist discourses, and producing persuasive political readings of her drama that reflect much more of the political challenge that the plays pose. It additionally explores her uneasy relationship with postmodernism, which presents itself particularly in Churchill’s later plays. The book contains a very helpful chapter on socialist contexts, which outlines some of the key events, debates, and movements during the late 1960s up until the early 2000s. This chapter also offers an incisive critique of the easy acceptance by some socialists of a postmodernist rejection of grand narratives and political agency. An in depth examination of the rarely explored interconnections of utopianism and theatre, forms another chapter, where all eight of Churchill’s plays, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Vinegar Tom, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Mad Forest, The Skriker, and Far Away, are introduced. The plays are then discussed in pairs in a further four chapters with reference to communist historiography, the class/gender intersection, the end-of-history thesis, ecocritical challenges and postmodernism.
Siân Adiseshiah is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Lincoln. Her research interests are in contemporary political drama, utopian studies, and gender theory, and she has published book chapters and journal articles in these fields.
“By persuasively locating Churchill’s drama within the concerns of the British Left as they evolved from the optimistic 1960s to the fragmented present, Sian Adiseshiah uncovers the plays’ political bedrock, which has been unfortunately obscured by successive waves of critical fashion. The result is a compelling reassessment of one of the world’s leading playwrights in light of the political tradition she herself explicitly embraces. It is also an illuminating—if sobering—account of the fate of political theatre after the demise of collectivist politics. This book performs an essential correction and expansion of our understanding of Churchill’s ambitious and principled drama.”
—Una Chaudhuri, Collegiate Professor, Professor of English and Drama, New York University
Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99
Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)
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From Kerouac Ascending: Memorabilia of the Decade of On the Road
“Katherine Burkman, best known for her contributions to Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, and modern drama studies in general, now provides an essential reference for students of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and the beats through this memoir by Elbert Lenrow. A beloved teacher at the New School for Social Research, Lenrow met and taught Jack Kerouac in the late forties, befriending him and Allen Ginsberg as well. The book offers unprecedented insight into the beats in general and Kerouac’s development as a writer, thinker, and cultural force in American literature. Howard Cunnell, who introduces the book, notes that through his friendship with Kerouac, ‘Lenrow got to ride in what would become the most famous car in modern American literature.’ And thanks to this book, now readers of Kerouac Ascending do, too.”
—Ann C. Hall, Professor, Ohio Dominican University; President, Harold Pinter Society
“The larger significance of the sustained and sustaining friendship between Elbert Lenrow and Kerouac and Ginsberg in this book is that it exhibits Jack and Allen in ways that are seldom, if ever, represented in accounts of their lives. As a bonus, from this fine, small book, the reader can acquire an enriched and enhanced understanding of the multifarious political, literary, and artistic relationships of virtually all the principal players in the cultural scene in the mid- to late 20th century.”
—James L. Battersby, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio State University
“Always their affectionate elder, Lenrow presents Kerouac and Ginsberg mostly in their own words, making no broad claim or judgments beyond the recognition that both writers spoke for their time as Walt Whitman did for his and that they have become iconic figures for a literary movement. It is a modest but important work presenting original materials saved by a gentle, sensitive, and literate man.”
—Mark S. Auburn, Professor Emeritus of English, former Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Akron
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