后现代主义论文(英文版)

A Brief Introduction to Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III was born on March 12, 1928. According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child.

Edward Albee is the most important contemporary American playwright of the "absurd". His plays on the absurdity of human life built very much on a frail illusion and spiritual emptiness. Albee's major success is Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - a three act play about a night of drunken verbal conflict between a middle-aged professor and his wife, in which a state of compassion is finally achieved after the" death" of their imaginary child. Albee's other important plays include The Zoo Story, The American Dream, and Tiny Alice. The American Dream expressed disenchantment with American middle-class values through the description of the appalling relationship of a family members. Tiny Alice is the story of a rich woman who seduces a Catholic lay brother into marriage and then murders him.

An Analysis of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

From the Post-modernist Perspective

Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is one of the most important plays in the history of American Drama, representing a sort of merging of the psychological drama represented by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller with the existential plays of Samuel Becket and Eugene Ionesco. This play has one of the strongest, most powerful screenplays ever. Primarily, the story is about George and Martha--a dysfunctional married couple in a university town. They spend their days fighting and retreating, sparring constantly, playing games of one-ups-manship. It is an absolutely chilling, grotesque portrait of codependency. One fateful evening a younger couple join them for some "entertainment", little suspecting that they will be drawn into an intense night where they are alternately challenged and used as pawns in George and Martha's struggle. This is not for the squeamish viewer. Even though the book was written 50 years ago, readers will be shocked and surprised about how far George and Martha was willing to go for victory. It is an absolute verbal bloodbath--fast, cruel, uncompromising, adult.

Before having an analysis of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from the post-modernist perspective. It’s necessary for us to have a general knowledge of post-modernist and its characteristics.

Postmodernism is a term describing large-scale changes in intellectual thought, cultural production, and global societies beginning in