The Emperor Jones/Anna Christie/The Hairy Ape [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION By Lionel Trilling The three plays in this volume have a double significance. They represent an important phase in the cultural life of America and they mark the first full steps in the philosophic search to which Eugene O'Neill has devoted his artistic life. The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie and The Hairy Ape were all written or produced between 1920 and 1921 and all were notable Broadway events. Their success was not only the triumph of an individual dramatist, but the vindication of a cultural movement of which O'Neill was an integral part. A movement difficult to define, its essence was contained in the Provincetown group which, from 1914, had done so much to advance the genius and career of the man who was to be its brightest light. It was a movement of cultural protest, of protest against the business civilization of America, against philistinism, puritanism and vulgarity. It undertook to foster whatever was fresh and true and unconventional in conduct or in art and to use it as a weapon against the dominant and insufficient culture of the time. vii