A History of Modern Drama, Volume II - by David Krasner (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A History of Modern Drama Volume II explores a remarkable breadth of topics and analytical approaches to the dramatic works, authors, and transitional events and movements that shaped world drama from 1960 through to the dawn of the new millennium.

• Features detailed analyses of plays and playwrights, examining the influence of a wide range of writers, from mainstream icons such as Harold Pinter and Edward Albee, to more unorthodox works by Peter Weiss and Sarah Kane
• Provides global coverage of both English and non-English dramas - including works from Africa and Asia to the Middle East
• Considers the influence of art, music, literature, architecture, society, politics, culture, and philosophy on the formation of postmodern dramatic literature
• Combines wide-ranging topics with original theories, international perspective, and philosophical and cultural context

Completes a comprehensive two-part work examining modern world drama, and alongside A History of Modern Drama: Volume I, offers readers complete coverage of a full century in the evolution of global dramatic literature.

From the Back Cover

Exploring a remarkable breadth of topics and analytical approaches, A History of Modern Drama Volume II offers an essential resource about the dramatic works, authors, and transitional events and movements that shaped world drama from 1960 to the dawn of the new millennium.

The volume provides global coverage of both English and non-English dramas - including works from Africa and Asia to the Middle East - and examines the influence of a wide range of writers, from mainstream icons such as Harold Pinter and Edward Albee, to more unorthodox works by authors such as Peter Weiss and Sarah Kane. It explores essential issues of theatricality and dramaturgy, while drawing from the fields of art, literature, society, politics, culture, and philosophy to trace the methodologies of world drama during the modern era.

This highly anticipated second volume completes a comprehensive two-part work examining modern world drama. It combines wide-ranging topics with original theories, international perspective, and philosophical and cultural context, and alongside Volume I, offers readers complete coverage of a full century in the evolution of global dramatic literature.

Review Quotes

David Krasner's A History of Modern Drama, Volume II: 1960-2000 offers... a structural and technique-based approach to differentiating dramatic eras. In his sequel to A History of Modern Drama, Volume I, Krasner shifts focus from dividing drama by time periods (i.e., "modern" and "contemporary") to categorizing dramatic eras according to their use of different formal techniques (i.e., "modern" and "postmodern"). This is an important distinction, as book-length studies on postmodern drama are few. Krasner's Volume II makes this scholarly move feel like a logical step and a natural conclusion.

This book will reinvigorate the study of postmodernism and drama. This is a worthy and important volume that should be read by anyone who teaches theatre history and/or modern and postmodern drama courses.

- Michael Y. Bennett, Modern Drama

About the Author

David Krasner is Professor and Dean of the School of the Arts at Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts. He is the author and editor of numerous books on modern drama, African American theatre, dramatic theory and criticism, and acting, including A History of Modern Drama: Volume I (2012), and Theatre in Theory: An Anthology (editor, 2008), both published by Wiley Blackwell.