G.

B SHAW
Acum ceva despre "Caesar and Cleopatra":
- the 20th century literature is characterized by a rebirth of dramatic interest both in Great Britain
and in the United States. In England the influence of Ibsen made itself strongly felt in the
problem plays of G.B. Shaw and in the realism of John Galsworthy and Somerset Maugham. T.S.
Eliot revived and enriched the verse drama, John Osborne expressed the rebellious attitude of the
"Angry Young Men" in Look Back in Anger. Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur
Miller gave America a serious drama, with modern features, influenced by the European
experiments.
- the modern "drama of ideas" is exemplified in the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, Galsworthy, and many
others. The problem plays represent in dramatic form a general social problem, a philosophic
idea, shown as it is confronted by or must be solved by the protagonist.
- Shaw's plays are conflicts of ideas and his characters prime reason for existence is to put
forward these ideas. His heroes were often created as masterpieces for the playwright's ideas.
They tend to make a lot of witty, intellectual speeches through which Shaw's ideas are conveyed
to the audience.
- the true subject of a debate drama being an idea, the events in the plot are less important. Shaw
said about his plots: "Shavian plots are as silly as Shakespearean plots and, like Shakespeare's
they are all stolen from other writers".
the innovatory technique is based on reversal: Shaw takes a familiar theatrical type or situation
and reverses it so that his audience is forced to reassess things radically. In Caesar and Cleopatra
Shaw reverses the traditional view on the two legendary characters. His Caesar has no trace of
heroism and grandeur. He loose like an old gentleman, a well-educated member of the English
middle-class, endowed with a sense of dry humor. Cleopatra, the glamorous, ambitious and
clever Queen of Egypt, appears in Shaw's play as a rather common, timid young girl who has
nothing from the majestic figure of the legendary queen.
-in Shaw's plays paradox is the most important comical device.
Shaw's reinterpretation of history:
Shaw's historical plays deglamorize history, underlining the discrepancy between the legend
surrounding historical personalities and the reality that lies beneath the "myth". The technique of
reversal functions with great comic effect when applied to famous historical characters like
Caesar and Cleopatra. Caesar, far from being a heroic figure, is seen by Cleopatra as an elderly
gentleman, who cannot scare even a girl. What is even funnier, he is told by a girl (for that is
Cleopatra's image in Shaw's play) how to govern: "You are very sentimental, Caesar; but you are
clever; and if you do as I tell you, you will soon learn to govern".
G.B. Shaw explained in his Notes to Caesar and Cleopatra that he intended "to produce an
impression of greatness by exhibiting Caesar as a man, not mortifying his nature by doing his
duty, but as simply doing what he naturally wants to do".
Melville+Whitman (+Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Hawthorne, Poe, Longfellow, Thoreau, Emerson),
in America, --- America's first great creative period, a full of flowering of the ROMANTIC
impulse---.
- The poetry of the period (1830-1865) was predominantly romantic in spirit and form. Moral
qualities were significantly present in the poems of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Thoreau.
Poe practiced a symbolist verse that had a great impact on European poetry. Whitman's poetry
was romantic in spirit and innovative in form.
- The American transcendentalists - Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller- carried the literary
expression of philosophic and religious ideas to a high level in their essays.
- In the 1850's emerged the powerful symbolic novels of Hawthorne and Melville.
Poe and Hawthorne practiced writing of short stories throughout the period, and the early prose
of Mark Twain established a basis for a realistic literature, using the language of the common
American.
.....Dickenson has tended to occupy a rather uneasy place in the canon of American poetry;
writers and critics have not always known what to make of her. Today, her place as one of the
two finest American poets of the 19th century is secure: along with Whitman, she literally
defines the very era that had so little palpable impact on her poetry.

Ceva despre "Mourning Becomes Electra", e. O'Neill, ...please!!!. Ce stiu eu: (asa, pe scurt,
zic in romana): act. are loc dupa Civil War, la Mannon House. Ezra Mannon -the father),
Christine Mannor (mother-she has an affair with Adam Brant), Lavinia (daughter) si Orin (son).
Christine planuieste impreuna cu Adam Brant sa-l omoare pe Ezra, ea pana la urma ii dezvaluie
acestuia relatia ei cu Brant si apoi il otraveste, inainte de a muri Ezra ii spune Laviniei ca
Christine l-a otravit; Lavinia ii promite lui Orin ca vor fugi amandoi in "Blessed Island???"
(thema Oedipeana), dar Orin aude ca de fapt Christine cu Adam Brant fac planuri de a fugi, in
consecinta il omoara pe Adam. Mai tarziu, tot Orin o omoara pe Christine, ...nu mai stiu ce se
mai intampla...., in final Orin se sinucide.
Mai adaugati va rog ceva idei aici......
Themes
Revenge
Revenge serves as a primary motivation for the play's actions. Seeking to revenge the death of
his mother, Marie Brantome, Adam hopes to destroy the Mannon family, especially Ezra.
The Mannon family is a complex web of revenge scenarios: Christine wants revenge on her
husband for her unhappy marriage; Lavinia wants revenge on her mother for killing her father;
Orin wants revenge on Brant for sleeping with his mother.
Paradise
Paradise is an obsession for many of the play's characters. As a seafaring family, early
generations of Mannons had sailed to beautiful South Pacific isles. Orin wants to run away with
his mother Christine an attempt to escape societal norms so that he can sleep with his mother.
Christine wants to go with her lover, Adam.
Style
Chorus
Traditionally in Greek tragedies, the chorus consists of masked actors who dance and chant.
Generally, they do not participate in the action itself, which allows them to remain objective and
offer advice or commentary. They often present background information and represent the
community's position or traditional values. In the Mourning Becomes Electra trilogy, the groups
of local people whose conversations and actions open the plays serve as the chorus.
Expressionism
Expressionism is a style of art that expresses internal experiences and psychological truth. Such
art does not present a realistic image of world, but instead tries to create in the viewer a powerful
"true" experience of a particular emotion, feeling, or state of mind.
Many of O'Neill's plays have expressionistic elements: masks, which conceal the actor's faces
TO REMEMBER PARTS OF SPEECH

Every name is called a NOUN:

FIELD and FOUNTAIN, STREET and TOWN
Instead of noun, a PRONOUN stands.
So HE and SHE clap their hands.
The ADJECTIVE describes a thing:
MAGIC world, or BRIDAL ring.
The VERB means action, something done:
To SING, and SHOUT, JUMP and RUN.
How things are done, the ADVERBS tell:
QUICKLY, SLOWLY, BADLY, WELL.
PREPOSITION shows relation
As IN the street or AT the station.
The CONJUNCTION joins in many ways:
Word AND sentences, phrase AND phrase.
The INTERJECTION cries out "HARK!"
I need an exclamation mark!
written text:
-fixed and stable-reading at whatever speed and time
-context is prepared much more densely
-writer is detached from reader in time and space
-carefully formulated
-more conventional, grammar rules are more respected, more formal vocabulary
-uses an acceptable standard language
-normally longer

spoken text:
-moves on in real time
-information is more diluted
-immediate interaction of the speaker with the listener
-may be in a regional dialect
JAMES JOYCE
Molly and her lover, Blazes Boylan, eat Plumtree's Potted Meat during their assignation; the term
is translated as "plum tree trademark canned meat." Good enough, but it misses the pun: "potted
meat" was Dublin argot for sex. When Leopold recalls Molly's description of the plump Ben
Dollard, that his fine singing voice was a "bass barrel tone," the translation does not embody the
play on words...
Ulysses

Ulysses (1922), generally considered Joyce's most mature work, is patterned on Homer's
Odyssey.
Each of the 18 chapters corresponds loosely with an episode in the Greek epic, but there are
echoes of Joyce's other models, Dante's Inferno and Goethe's Faust, among other sources. The
action takes place in a single day, June 16, 1904 (still observed as "Bloomsday" in many
countries), on which the Irish Jew, Leopold Bloom (Ulysses), walks or rides through the streets
of Dublin after leaving his wife, Molly (Penelope), at home in bed.

Through the stream-of-consciousness technique, Joyce permits the reader to enter the
consciousness of Bloom and perceive the chaos of fragmentary conversations, physical
sensations, and memories which register there. Underlying the surface action is the mythic quest
of Leopold for a son to replace the child he and Molly have lost. He finds instead Stephen
Dedalus (Telemachus), who, having rejected his family and faith, is in need of a father. At each
of their chance encounters during the day, the mythic quest becomes more evident. The two are
finally united when Bloom rescues the drunken Stephen from unsavory companions and the
police; they share a symbolic communion over cups of hot chocolate in Bloom's home, a promise
of future involvement for Stephen with Leopold, his spiritual "father," and Molly, the earth
mother, who, with her paramours, represents fleshly involvement in the experience of life.
Joyce's technical innovations (particularly his extensive use of stream of consciousness), his
experiments with form, and his unusually frank subject matter and language made Ulysses an
important milestone in the development of the
modern novel.