《尤金 奥尼尔写作特色分析》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《尤金 奥尼尔写作特色分析（23页珍藏版）》请在金锄头文库上搜索。
1、天津大学 2008 届本科生毕业设计(论文)1Eugene ONeills Writing Trajectory and EvolutionI.A general introduction of his life and his main worksEugene Gladstone ONeill was born on Oct.16, 1888, in New York City. His father was a well-known actor. As a child ONeill travelled with his fathers company until he was 7, in
2、which time he was cared for by nanny, hired to help his mother who was not recovering from her addition to morphine. The nanny took young Eugene to see the sights wherever they travelled. At seven he had a wider acquaintance with the natural wonders and oddities of America than most Americans ever a
3、cquire. All the while Eugene absorbed the grammar of theatrical artifice, a native language. At seven he went to a private school, a Catholic school, he remained in that kind of school until he was thirteen. In 1906 he entered Princeton but left at the end of his freshman year. ONeill drifted for se
4、veral years. He went to Honduras and then worked as a seaman travelling to Africa and to South America. He finally took a job as a reporter for the New London Telegraph in Connecticut. The years of irregular living, combined with heavy drinking, had undermined his health, and in 1912 he entered a tu
5、berculosis sanatorium.During his illness ONeill read the works of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg and decided to try writing plays. In 1914-15 he studied dramatic writing with George Pierce Baker at Harvard. He wrote the one-act plays that were presented by the Provincetown Players in Massachuset
6、ts. The company moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where it formed the Playwrights Theater. It opened in 1916, and the first bill included ONeills Bound East for Cardiff, his New York debut. This play and three others In the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of the Caribbees, based
7、on ONeills experiences at sea were produced together in 1924 as S.S.Glencairn. The immediate success of these short plays established ONeills reputation.In 1920 ONeills first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon was produced on Broadway. It won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1922 Anna Christie won another,
8、and in 1928 Strange Interlude won a third. ONeill journeyed to Paris, where he began Mourning 天津大学 2008 届本科生毕业设计(论文)2Becomes Electra, produced in 1931. In 1936 he was the first American dramatist to win the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1946 his successful The Iceman Cometh was produced. Other work
9、s are The Emperor Jones (1920), Desire Under the Elms (1924), and The Great God Brown (1926), Marco Millions (1927) included some humor, but Ah, Wilderness! (1933), a nostalgic view of small-town life, was ONeills only comedy.The last ten years of ONeills life were filled with frustration. After suf
10、fering from multiple health problems (including alcoholism) over many years, ONeill ultimately faced a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it impossible for him to write (he had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way) during the last 10 years of his l
11、ife. While at Tao House, ONeill had intended to write a cycle of 11 plays chronicling an American family since the 1800s. Only two of these, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions were ever completed. As his health worsened, ONeill lost in inspiration for the project and wrote the three large
12、 autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Days Journey into Night, which won a fourth Pulitzer Prize and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before leaving Tao House ad losing his ability to write. Drafts of many other uncompleted plays we
13、re destroyed by Carlotta at Eugenes request.ONeill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. (The building is now the Shelton Hall dormitory at Boston University). There is an urban legend perpetuated by students that ONeills spirit h
14、aunts the room and dormitory. A revised analysis of his autopsy report shows that, contrary to the previous diagnosis, he did not have Parkinsons disease, but a late-onset cerebella cortical atrophy. He was interred in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. ONeills final words we
15、re reportedly “Born in a hotel room, and Goddammit, died in one!”Although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death, in 1956 Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Days Journey into Night to be published, and produced on st
16、age to tremendous 天津大学 2008 届本科生毕业设计(论文)3critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. This last play is widely considered to be his finest. ONeills home in New London, Monte Cristo Cottage, was made a National Historic Landmark in 1971. His home in Northern California was preserved as the Eugene ONeill National Historic Site in 1976.ONeill was the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the only American playwright ev
