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Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century

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Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century American Literature Readings in the 21st Century Series Editor Linda Wagner-Martin University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14765 Stephen Marino · David Palmer Editors Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century Contemporary Views of His Writings and Ideas Editors Stephen Marino David Palmer Department of English Massachusetts Maritime Academy St. Francis College Buzzards Bay, MA, USA Brooklyn, NY, USA American Literature Readings in the 21st Century ISBN 978-3-030-37292-7 ISBN 978-3-030-37293-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37293-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover credit: Ronald Grant Archive/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland PREFACE This book is a project of the Arthur Miller Society, a group of academics committed to furthering the study and performance of Miller’s plays and the exploration of his ideas. The Miller Society was founded by Steven R. Centola in 1995, growing out of conferences on Miller he had organ- ized at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Since then the Miller Society has hosted twelve more conferences devoted to Miller and his work in addition to organizing panels on Miller at national and interna- tional literature conferences, such as the American Literature Association Conference, the Comparative Drama Conference, and the International Conference on American Drama and Theater, which generally is held in Europe. In 2006, the Miller Society launched the Arthur Miller Journal, a semi-annual periodical containing articles about Miller and his works, reviews of productions of Miller’s plays, and notices of new books rele- vant to Miller studies. The journal is published by Penn State University Press. The Miller Society invites as new members anyone with an inter- est in Miller’s life and plays, his other writings and his role as a public intellectual, or the development of twentieth- and twenty-frst-century American theater. More information about the Arthur Miller Society, upcoming events related to Miller, and the Arthur Miller Journal can be found at the following websites: The Arthur Miller Society: https://arthurmillersociety.net/. The Arthur Miller Society on Facebook: https://www.facebook. com/arthurmillersociety/. v vi PREFACE The Arthur Miller Journal at Penn State University Press: http:// www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_ArthurMiller.html. New York, USA David Palmer President, The Arthur Miller Society ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Arthur Miller Society gratefully acknowledges the guidance and encouragement of Allie Troyanos, our editor at Palgrave Macmillan, who frst suggested that our proposal for an anthology on Arthur Miller could be suitable for the series American Literature Readings in the Twenty- First Century and who coordinated our proposal’s review by Linda Wagner-Martin, the series’ academic editor. We also are grateful to Rachel Jacobe at Palgrave, who shepherded the manuscript through the fnal phases of its editorial development and the production process. We thank Bloomsbury Publishing PLC and its imprint Methuen Drama for permission for Matthew Roudané to adapt his introduction to their book The Collected Essays of Arthur Miller (2015) for publication here. We also thank Bloomsbury for its permission for Claire Conceison to draw material from her introduction to the 2015 centennial edition of Miller’s 1984 book Salesman in Beijing, retitled Death of a Salesman in Beijing. vii PRAISE FOR ARTHUR MILLER FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY “Presenting a variety of essays on his writings, this collection convinc- ingly demonstrates Arthur Miller’s continuing importance in the history of American dramatic literature, making an excellent case for his ongoing relevance for twenty-frst century readers and audiences. The contribu- tors are thoroughly familiar with current Miller scholarship, and because many of them regularly teach Miller’s work, their essays also will be especially useful in the classroom.” —Jackson R. Bryer, Professor of English, University of Maryland, USA ix CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Stephen Marino Part I Arthur Miller and the American Dramatic Canon 2 Arthur Miller and American Tragedy 13 Livia Sacchetti 3 Pipe Dreams and the Self: Eugene O’Neill’s and Arthur Miller’s Conceptions of Tragedy 27 David Palmer 4 Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and the American Family 51 Brenda Murphy 5 Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and Crises of the American Family: American Civilization and Its Discontents 65 Michael Y. Bennett xi xii CONTENTS 6 Arthur Miller and Contemporary American Women Dramatists 75 Ellen B. Anthony 7 Shaming, Rebellion, and Tragedy: Arthur Miller and African American Drama 99 David Palmer 8 “Some Men Don’t Bounce”: Miller’s The Price, Mamet’s American Buffalo, and Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss 123 E. Andrew Lee Part II Arthur Miller, the Writer 9 Approaches to Teaching All My Sons: Making the Play Matter Across the Curriculum 141 Jan Balakian 10 Irish Immigrant Rebellion in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape and Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays 161 Joshua E. Polster 11 Before the Empty Bench: The Equivocal Motif of “Trial” in Arthur Miller’s Works 177 Rupendra Guha Majumdar 12 Reaganism in The Ride Down Mt. Morgan 197 Thiago Russo 13 Arthur Miller, Essayist 211 Matthew Roudané 14 Viewing the Playwright Through a Different Lens: Miller’s Fiction and How It Connects to His Life and Drama 219 Susan C. W. Abbotson CONTENTS xiii 15 Miller in China 237 Claire Conceison Part III Arthur Miller and Contemporary Issues 16 Human Rights and the Freedom to Write 263 Christopher Bigsby 17 “What a Man”: Performing Masculinity in Arthur Miller’s and Tennessee Williams’ Plays 277 Claire Gleitman 18 Devouring Mechanization: Arthur Miller and the Proto-Posthuman 293 Peter Sloane Index 311 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Susan C. W. Abbotson is a leading scholar on the work of Arthur Miller and has published three books on the playwright, A Critical Companion to Arthur Miller (2007), Student Companion to Arthur Miller (2000), and Understanding Death of a Salesman (with Brenda Murphy) (1999); edited the Methuen Drama Student Edition of The Crucible (2010), as well as the Collected Essays of Arthur Miller for Penguin (2016); and published numerous articles on Miller in books, journals, and databases. Her most recent book was for Bloomsbury/ Methuen, Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s (2017). Ellen B. Anthony is an adjunct assistant professor of theater history and Shakespeare studies at Marymount Manhattan College. She earned her MFA in dramaturgy from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and a Ph.D. in theater history from the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. Her current research area is celebrity culture and its infuence on play adaptation on the eighteenth-century British stage. She recently authored a chapter on Katherine Philips, one of the frst women dramatists to be produced in Ireland, entitled “Corneille in Dublin” for the anthology The Senses in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, Vol. 1, edited by Ann Buckley, forthcoming from Brepols Publishers. Jan Balakian is Professor of English at Kean University, where she teaches literature and writing. She has published essays on American drama (Cambridge University Press); a cultural studies book about Wendy Wasserstein’s plays (Applause); hosted an international xv xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS conference with the NEA, “Why American Plays Matter;” and writ- ten screenplays and plays. Her current play, Dreams on Fire, set during the election of 2016 on a college campus, explores the transmission of trauma through the Armenian Genocide. Michael Y. Bennett is an Associate Professor of English and Affliated Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He also will be a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, where he will be a Visiting Fellow in 2020. Known for his work on absurd drama and his work on the philosophy of theater, he is the author or editor of eleven books in the felds of drama, theater, and performance studies. Christopher Bigsby an award-winning academic, novelist, biogra- pher, journalist, and broadcaster, is a Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of East Anglia, where he founded the Arthur Miller Center for American Studies. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts, he has published more than 50 books, among them the three-volume The Cambridge History of American Theatre (edited with Don B.
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