Dylan Thomas's poetry and the voice of feeling in modernist literature

Dylan Thomas wrote sixteen poems that were considered as great. Thomas was born in a middle class family and his father was a schoolteacher. Hoewver, Thomas did not wear the "old school tie, his upper lip was far from stiff and everything about him seemed too much. In short, he was a slob." (Tindall, 1962) The work of Tindall states that Thomas "burst upon London with his marvels…in 1933" and dazzled his readers. (1962) Thomas proclaimed that he was a "Welshman" first and secondly a "drunkard." (Tindall, 1962) Thomas is described as "outrageous, irresponsible and charming." (Tindall, 1962)

Thomas is reported to have both acted and looked like a poet. Thomas' poems are about "the daisies in deep" and used phrase that were transcendental" and what was loved most by Thomas' followers was "his voice -- not what he said but how he said it." (Tindall, 1962) His voice was "the true voice of feeling." (Tindall, 1962 ) In Thomas' work 'New Lines' (1956) Thomas holds to the idea that "poetry must be metaphorical." (Tindall, 1962) Thomas is stated to be "out of fashion." (Tindall, 196) American taste however, running about two decades behind British preferences is reported to be satisfied with Thomas' work. There was no interest in politics or sports on the part of Thomas and he is stated to be "a religious poet, a surrealist, a disciple of Freud, a composer of nonsense verse, and a student of Welsh 'Cynghannedd'." (Tindall, 1962) Thomas simply does not fit into any mold of his day.

Biography of Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was born in New York City on October 17, 1915, to Isadore and Gittel Miller, who were 30 and 22 years of age respectively. Miller had an older brother and they lived in a "splendid apartment in comfort and security high above Central Park." (Gottfried, 2004) Miller's father was prosperous due to his owning Miltex Coat and Suit factory and showroom with in excess of 800 employees. Miller's family was Jewish as was his neighborhood and school. Miller's father invested heavily on the stock market and lost all of his holdings overnight and was bankruptcy. The family moved to Brooklyn living near Miller's aunts. Arthur Miller was not an instant success in his writing career. While there were some Broadway producers interested in his plays in 1940, there are reported to have been "no takers." (Gottfried, 2004) The Theatre Guild is reported to have offered constructive criticism stating that Miller's plays were too challenging "not merely in the way that they were written, but in what they were saying." (Gottfried, 2004)

Miller is reported to have left college as a "praised, prized and confidently budding playwright, protected by the conviction that failing to get a drama produced did not mean that it was worthless, not did having a play produced mean that it was valuable." (Gottfried, 2004 ) However, Miller questioned his ability. Miller wrote the majority of his work from his own personal experiences. Miller went to work at the Navy shipyard in 1942. Miller had a regular weekly radio series called 'The Dupont Cavalcade of America' on Monday nights on NBC Blue network and the radio experience "served him well. Toward the end of 1943 Miller was presented with a lucrative screening writing opportunity, $750 a week to write a script based on the celebrated and beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle." (Gottfried, 2004 ) Miller wrote many plays but his masterpieces include "Death of a Salesman', 'The Crucible', and 'A View from the Bridge'.

Biography of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is one of the most prominent of nineteenth century poets. Whitman was born on Long Island in 1819 and grew up in Brooklyn. Whitman was formally educated and worked as a printer, reporter, editor, and schoolteacher. The work of Reynolds (2011) states that Whitman described himself as a poet "attracting [the nation], body and soul to himself, hanging on it neck with incomparable love,/plunging his seminal muscle into its merits and demerits." (Reynolds, 2011) Whitman wrote in his 1955 'Leaves of Grass' preface that the proof of a poet "is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it."Whitman is reported to have "effected real change in the realm of literature. Stylistically, he had exploded conventional patterns of rhyme and meter, freeing the poetic line to follow the organic rhythms of feeling and voice." (Reynolds, 2011) Whitman's work introduced "new democratic inclusiveness, absorbing images from virtually every aspect of social and cultural life." (Reynolds, 2011) Whitman held that he thought of art as "something to serve the people -- the mass: when it fails to do that its false to its promises." (Reynolds, 2011) Whitman attempted to write his poetry from a view of nature and celebration of the earth. Whitman's works contain restlessness and feelings of unhappiness and it is stated by Reynolds that these feelings associated with Whitman's childhood was due to his family's "unstable position in the changing economic and social order." (Reynolds, 2011) Reynolds additionally notes that these early exposure to "issues of class and politics…later would flower in his political journalism and differently in his poetry." (Reynolds, 2011)

Biography of August Wilson

The work of Nadel (1993) states that August Wilson is one of the "most significant playwrights in the history of American Theater and one of the most important contemporary African-American writers." (Nadel, 1993) Wilson began writing plays in the 1970s as well as in the latter part of the 1970s Wilson is reported to have "embarked on an ambitious project to write a cycle of plays about African-American life, one set in each decade of the twentieth century." (Nadel, 1993) Wilson is reported as one of the "most productive of American dramatists and equally one of the most vigilant historicizes of African-American Experience." (Nadel, 1993)

Biography of Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 to Patrick Heaney and Margaret Kathleen Heaney in County Derry, Northern Ireland at the family farm Mossbawn. Seamus was the oldest of nine children. Heaney attended a school that had a mix of Catholic and Protestant children. Heaney was awarded first Class Honors in English at Queen's and the McMullen Medal for academic achievement. One of the first of Heaney's poems was published in Queen's literary magazine in 1959. In 1962-62 Heaney studied at St. Joseph's College of Education in Belfast to earn his Teacher's Training Diploma. Heaney became a lecturer at St. Josephs University and in 1969 Heaney spent two months in Europe to fulfill the requirements of the Somerset Maugham Award. Heaney's essays and articles 'Preoccupations' were published between the years of 1965 and 1975. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm, Sweden in 1995. (Vendler, 2012, paraphrased)

Biography of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Mississippi. The publicly known Tennessee Williams was "largely his own creation." (Tischler, 2000) Williams was a rebel against his upbringing in a Puritan home and was an "intensely serious writer who saw his creativity as a gift and writing as a vocation." (Tischler, 2000) The Delta South influenced his writing and specifically in his work "Two Rivers Country" it is stated "The heat, the storms, the floods in that region, the division into social classes, the color imagery and rhythms of the speech were to shape his setting and dialogue." (Tischler, 2000) Williams immortalized his own family in his plays. Williams's life was influenced by a trip he took in 1928 to Europe that involved a trip into New York City. Williams went to see plays on Broadway. Williams studied at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Williams failed in school but found that parties and drinking were right up his alley. Williams attended the University of Iowa in 1939. Williams first play produced by the Theatre Guild is reported as having "provoked outrage there and quickly closed" leaving Williams "shocked and discouraged." (Tischler, 2000) In 1941 Williams acknowledged his homosexuality. Williams wrote daily. Williams received grants from the Rockefeller foundation. In 1944 his best play 'The Glass Menagerie' was produced. Other successes include 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. Williams Whitman died February 24, 1983 at his New York City residence. Whitman is author of twenty-five plays, as well as two novels, sixty short stories and more than one hundred poems.

Biography of Miuel Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a playwright and Spanish novelist, poet as well as a playwright. Cervantes work 'Don Quixote' is held as the first modern European novel as well as being a classic of Western literature. Cervantes father was a barber and surgeon and his mother was sold into marriage in 1543. There is little known of Cervantes childhood. Cervantes married Catalina de Salazar y Palacios in 1584 and lived a wandering existence for two decades working as a tax collector for the Spanish Armada. Cervantes lived in poverty until 1605 when Don Quixote was published.

Origin of Black History Month

Black History month is a month that is set aside for honoring and celebrating the achievements of black individuals in history. Black history month originated with Carter G. Woodson (1875 to 1950) a son of former slaves . Woodson was self-taught until high school. Woodson's realization that the history of blacks had been ignored in written texts resulted in Woodson's idea of 'Negro History Week' in 1937 was formalized in 1976 as Black History Month. According to Younger (2013) "In 1925, the second week of February was deemed Negro History Week since it contained the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. This designated week came before Brown v. Board of Education in Kansas, before Emmitt Till in Mississippi, before Bloody Sunday in Alabama and before the Civil Rights Acts in 1964. In 1976, President Gerald Ford expanded Negro History Week to a full month and named it Black History Month. I bring up this lineage to say Black History is not used so much to highlight the history of Black people, but to reflect on the struggle for freedom." (Younger, 2013)

Ancient Greek Theater

The work of Green, et al. (2003) states that the conditions of the Greek theatre changed during the 1000 years of Greek drama and as well that the time and place of the theater changed. In the early 3rd century BC actor and performer guilds existed and performance was held as an art or profession resulting in the skill being standardized. Green et al. (2003) additionally reports "Perhaps the single most significant issue that Green raises about the theatre and its associated objects, whether those objects are for use in an actual dramatic production or decorate items used in daily life, is their ubiquitous nature. These objects were not restricted to the elite but were bought by the community at large and so indicate the prevalent place theatre enjoyed at many levels of society." (Green et al., 2003) Green et al. (2003) reports that the images of the principal mask types were integrated into common everyday usage and the "fact that many such objects were inexpensively mass-produced in a mould confirms that theatre was an integral part of the daily experience of life and not strictly a festival occasion." (Green, et al., 2003)

Ancient Roman Theater

The work of Beacham (1991) reports that knowledge of early Rome "is very incomplete…most of our information comes from Livy, who is writing in the age of Augustus." (Beacham, 1991) Augustus is reported to record "that the Romans had their first experience of the theater in the middle of the fourth century BC when they witnessed performances by an invited troupe of Etruscans." (1991) Beacham writes that the "art of oratory was nurtured and recognized to be of supreme significance throughout Roman history, not only for obtaining public office, but for exercising effective power both within the institutions of the Roman state, and in times of political crisis, outside of them as well." (Beacham, 1991) Reported as a precursor of the theater in Rome is that of the Fescennine verses which involved farmers in Rome having a celebration following harvest, which included poems of a bawdy nature.

William Shakespeare and The Globe Theater

It is related that the Globe Theater was an open-air theater and one that was used in months in which the temperature was moderate. The Globe was defined as a summer house. The building was open on three sides and featured a large enclosed balcony with smaller roofed galleries at the top. On the stage level hiding places existed for people and objects. The audience at the Globe Theater was either standing or seated close to the stage action and this allowed "both playwright and actor to create unlimited illusions, transporting the audience from Juliet's tomb in one play to raging storm at sea in another." (Baranger, 2005)

Moliere and The French Theater - 17th Century

The work of Hollier (1994) reports that a lifelong and total involvement on the part of Moliere "with the theater undoubtedly provides the best explanation of riches and diversity of Moliere's work," Moliere is reported to have made significant contIributiosn to the development of French Opera. It is reported that Moliere in contrast to Aristole and Cicero had "exposed the most unbearable defects the most monstrous vices…he invited his audience to laugh at a hypocrite and an evil lord." (Hollier, 1994) It is reported that with Moliere "the comic no longer had any limits; it became something universal, a point-of-view on the entire human conditions." (Hollier, 1994) It is noted that Moliere put "society, its language, its hypocrisy, and its false values on trail." (Hollier, 1994) Moliere is reported as having questioning "the principles and the comic mechanisms on which he had been relying."

Commedia dell 'Arte

Commedia dell'arte involves a single person retaining their name, costume and essential basic characteristics in successive plays, but is made to appear in diverse circumstances and in diverse relationships with companions." (Nicoll, 1987) It is reported that in Commedia dell-arte that the individual's "essential personality remains the same, the impression we get is of an individual revealed in different ways through the varying connections he has with his fellows and through the particular positions in life which have been accorded him." (Nicoll, 1987)

The Theater of The Absurd

According to the Dictionary of the Theater: Terms, Concepts and Analysis written by Pavis and Shantz (1998) "Absurd elements are felt to be unreasonable, nonsensical or lacking any logical connection with the rest of the text or performance." Elements of theater are referred to as absurd "when we cannot place them in their dramaturgical, theatrical and ideological contexts." (Pavis and Shantz, 1998)

Two Theater Stages: The Proscenium Stage + The Thrust Stage

There are various types of stage setups in the theater including the Proscenium Stage and the Thrust Stage. There are reported to be both disadvantages as well as advantages to the proscenium model. It is fairly easy to stage a play so that all spectators can see all performer's faces since the actors are viewed by the audience from one direction only. The proscenium theater enables the use of a great deal of scenery due to the picture-frame type construction. Additionally, light is more easily controlled in the proscenium theater. Disadvantages include the division of the actors and the audience. Due to the requirements of scenery by the proscenium model the plays are more expensive to produce. The Thrust Stage is the second most commonly used stage and is referred to as a three-quarter stage. The stage literally 'thrusts' into the audience with the audience sitting on three sides of the stage.