A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, Broken Glass

by Brater, Enoch; Abbotson, Susan C. W.; Marino, Stephen; Zinman, Toby; Ackerman, Alan

• ISBN13: 9781408184875
• ISBN10: 1408184877
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-11-21
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Arthur Miller provides the essential guide to Miller's most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on five of Miller's plays: All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge and Broken Glass. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers want a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Miller's artistry. A chronology of Miller's life and work helps to situate his oeuvre in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of his writing, its recurrent themes and how these are intertwined with his life and times.
For each play the author provides a summary of the plot, followed by commentary on the context, themes, characters, structure and language, and the play in production - both on stage and screen adaptations; there are questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases in the text. The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Miller's work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Miller's greatest plays.

Author Biography

Stephen Marino is the founding editor of the Arthur Miller Journal and is adjunct professor of English at St Francis College, New York, USA. He is a former president of the Arthur Miller Society.

Toby Zinman is Professor of English, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and theatre critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Variety.

Susan C. W. Abbotson is Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA.

Alan Ackerman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto. His publications include The Portable Theater: American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage and Against Theater: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage, which he co-edited with Martin Puchner.

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsA chronology of Miller's life and workIntroduction 1. Death of Salesman2. The Crucible3. A View from the Bridge4. All My Sons5. Broken Glass6. Questions for study7. Further reading