Contents: Multi-ethnic American drama – Eugene O’Neill – Dramatic realism – African American theatre – Latina/o American drama – First Nations drama – Asian American theatre.
Marc Maufort is a professor of English-language literatures and drama at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). He is the author of a monograph entitled Transgressive Itineraries: Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism (2003), a comparative study of the realist aesthetic in contemporary Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand theatre. He has also edited or co-edited several books on American and postcolonial drama, including Crucible of Cultures: Anglophone Drama at the Dawn of a New Millennium (2002), Performing Aotearoa: New Zealand Theatre and Drama in an Age of Transition (2007), and more recently, Signatures of the Past: Cultural Memory in Contemporary Anglophone North American Drama (2008).
«Marc Maufort’s impressive study, ‘Labyrinth of Hybridities’, puts
critical works of contemporary African American, Asian American,
Native American and Latino/a drama into productive conversation.
Maufort insightfully argues that these works purposefully push
against the limitations of conventional realism and indeed
hybridize the form. This is one of the few scholarly works that
examines multi-ethnic dramas comparatively.
Consequently, this is a text that scholars and students of American
drama and literature must read.» (Harry J. Elam, Jr., Olive H.
Palmer Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University)
«‘Labyrinth’ is a thoroughly researched monograph with copious
footnotes and perspicacious readings of well-known and lesser-known
multi-ethnic American playwrights and their works. Maufort brings
to light stylistic, thematic, and dialogic techniques pioneered by
O’Neill and taken up by the playwrights included in the book.
‘Labyrinth’ is thorough, concise, and astute in its treatment of a
cornucopia of contemporary plays while it investigates O’Neill’s
legacy in postmodern experimental theater.» (Jeremy Ekberg, The
Eugene O’Neill Review 33, 2012/2)
«In his Epilogue, Maufort elucidates the many similarities among
the ethnic dramatists he is examining without flattening them into
a single mold. His analysis makes us aware of the intensely vibrant
and experimental theater scene that these playwrights were helping
to create at the end of the last century and the dawn of the
twenty-first. Maufort’s book reminds us of the richness and
complexity of the many cultures that make up the ‘American.’ And
even while he shows us the frequent marginalization of ethnic work,
he helps to embed that corpus more firmly in mainstream American
drama. This is a volume that should be of great interest to anyone
interested in Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and Theater Studies
as well as literary scholars and comparatists.» (Kathleen L. Komar,
Recherche Littéraire/Literary Research 28, 2012)
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