The Cambridge Companion To Sam Shepard

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard written by Matthew Roudané and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few American playwrights have exerted as much influence on the contemporary stage as Sam Shepard. His plays are performed on and off Broadway and in all the major regional American theatres. They are also widely performed and studied in Europe, particularly in Britain, Germany and France, finding both a popular and scholarly audience. In this collection of seventeen original essays, American and European authors from different professional and academic backgrounds explore the various aspects of Shepard s career - his plays, poetry, music, fiction, acting, directing and film work. The volume covers the major plays, including Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, and True West, as well as other lesser known but vitally important works. A thorough chronology of Shepard s life and career, together with biographical chapters, a note from the legendary Joseph Chaikin, and an interview with the playwright, give a fascinating first-hand account of an exuberant and experimental personality.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard written by Matthew Roudané and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin written by David S. Ferris and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin. The volume provides examinations of the different aspects of Benjamin's work that have had a significant effect on contemporary critical and historical thought. Topics discussed by experts in the field include Benjamin's relation to the avant-garde movements of his time, his theories on language and mimesis, modernity, his significance and relevance to modern cultural studies, and his autobiographical writings. Additional material includes a guide to further reading and a chronology.

Download or read book The Late Work of Sam Shepard written by Shannon Blake Skelton and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed by critics during the 1980s as the decade's 'Great American Playwright', Sam Shepard continued to produce work in a wide array of media including short prose, films, plays, performances and screenplays until his death in 2017. Like Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams in their autumnal years, Shepard relentlessly pressed the potentialities and possibilities of theatre. This is the first volume to consider Shepard's later work and career in detail and ranges across his work produced since the late 1980s. Shepard's motion picture directorial debut Far North (1988) served as the beginning of a new cycle of work. He returned to the stage with the politically engaged States of Shock (1991) which resembled neither his earlier plays nor his family cycle. With both Far North and States of Shock, Shepard signaled a transition into a phase in which he would experiment in form, subject and media for the next two decades. Skelton's comprehensive study includes consideration of his work in films such as Hamlet (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and Brothers (2009); issues of authenticity in the film and screenplay Don't Come Knocking (2005) and the play Kicking a Dead Horse (2007); of memory and trauma in Simpatico, The Late Henry Moss and When the World was Green, and of masculine and conservative narratives in States of Shock and The God of Hell. Lauded by critics in his lifetime and since his death in July 2017 as 'one of the most important and influential writers of his generation' (NY Times), Shepard 'excelled as an actor, screenwriter, playwright and director' (Guardian); this is a timely and important assessment of his work spanning the last three decades of his life.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to American Modernism written by Walter Kalaidjian and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original essays by twelve distinguished international scholars offer critical overviews of the major genres, literary culture, and social contexts that define the current state of scholarship. This Companion also features a chronology of key events and publication dates covering the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The introductory reference guide concludes with a current bibliography of further reading organized by chapter topics.

Download or read book Understanding Sam Shepard written by James A. Crank and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ideal introduction into the complex and compelling dramas of the acclaimed playwright Understanding Sam Shepard investigates the notoriously complex and confusing dramatic world of Sam Shepard, one of America's most prolific, thoughtful, and challenging contemporary playwrights. During his nearly fifty-year career as a writer, actor, director, and producer, Shepard has consistently focused his work on the ever-changing American cultural landscape. James A. Crank's comprehensive study of Shepard offers scholars and students of the dramatist a means of understanding Shephard's frequent experimentation with language, setting, characters, and theme. Beginning with a brief biography of Shepard, Crank shows how experiences in Shepard's life eventually resonate in his work by exploring the major themes, unique style, and history of Shepard's productions. Focusing first on Shepard's early plays, which showcase highly experimental, frenetic explorations of fractured worlds, Crank discusses how the techniques from these works evolve and translate into the major works in his "family trilogy": Curse of the Starving Class, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, and True West. Shepard often uses elements from his past—his relationship with his father, his struggle for control within the family, and the breakdown of the suburban American dream—as major starting points in his plays. Shepard is a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, eleven Obie Awards, and a Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Augmented with an extensive bibliography, Understanding Sam Shepard is an ideal point of entrance into complex and compelling dramas of this acclaimed playwright.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer written by Piero Boitani and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-12 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer is an extensively revised version of the first edition, which has become a classic in the field. This new volume responds to the success of the first edition and to recent debates in Chaucer Studies. Important material has been updated, and new contributions have been commissioned to take into account recent trends in literary theory as well as in studies of Chaucer's works. New chapters cover the literary inheritance traceable in his works to French and Italian sources, his style, as well as new approaches to his work. Other topics covered include the social and literary scene in England in Chaucer's time, and comedy, pathos and romance in the Canterbury Tales. The volume now offers a useful chronology, and the bibliography has been entirely updated to provide an indispensable guide for today's student of Chaucer.