The Critical Response to Arthur Miller

(Hardback)

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Presenting roughly sixty year's worth of Miller scholarship, Centola and Cirulli offer a wide range of interpretations and critical responses to the playwright's work. Incorporating insights from several disciplines including, but not limited to, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, this work also contains discussions of his work in light of new understandings discovered through considerations of cultural contexts, performance issues, feminist concerns, as well as deconstructionist and postmodernist redefinitions of the textuality of Miller's writing. Presenting roughly sixty year's worth of Miller scholarship, Centola and Cirulli offer a wide range of interpretations and critical responses to the playwright's work. Incorporating insights from several disciplines including, but not limited to, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, this work also contains discussions of his work in light of new understandings discovered through considerations of cultural contexts, performance issues, feminist concerns, as well as deconstructionist and postmodernist redefinitions of the textuality of Miller's writing. Bearing witness to the enduring value of Miller's work and the relevance of his artistic vision, this body of critical essays reveals why the writer's influence has been so widespread. Adept at dramatic experimentation, Miller succeeded in inspiring the work not only of American playwrights but also that of dramatists around the world.

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This collection of critical essays features the most significant articles written about Miller's plays over the six decades of his prodigious output. In tracing the evolution of Miller scholarship, the volume demonstrates a wide range of approaches and interpretations, from political and psychological readings to debates about the categorization of individual plays. In his excellent introduction, however, Centola finds consistent themes in the essays and also notes the ways that reviews of certain periods reflect the current popular trends in literary criticism. The text includes a detailed, annotated chronology of Miller's life and a list of additional reading. * Reference & Research Book News *

Author Bio

STEVEN R. CENTOLA is Professor of English at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. The founding president of the Arthur Miller Society, he has edited four books, including two that he collaborated on with Arthur Miller: The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (Revised Edition), and Echoes Down the Corridor. He has also published three interviews with Arthur Miller, as well as numerous articles on the playwright in various books and scholarly journals. MICHELLE CIRULLI teaches at Twin Valley High School in Pennsylvania.