...if you have ever mulled over this question, then panic not, friends! I have a new chapter for that. I am pleased to say that my chapter on Drama in the 1930s has just been published in the new The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the 1930s. I am delighted to see this in print, alongside chapters from a whole host of illustrious modernists. Rather brilliantly, my chapter is one of those available open-access on Google Books. Do let me know if it inspires any questions or thoughts.
Here is the abstract so you can decide if it worth your reading time:
In 1938, Stephen Spender imagined a ‘revolution in the ideas of drama’, a theatre that could both deal with the complex socio-politics of the decade and take on new aesthetic challenges. The trouble, of course, was what this drama might look like in practice. In fact, in addressing the multifarious artistic and political disputes of this period, drama in the 1930s resists easy critical definition, residing in a liminal sense betwixt and between positions, terminology, and aesthetics. It can be read as highbrow, lowbrow, or middlebrow, with many individual examples flitting between these permeable categories.
Here is the abstract so you can decide if it worth your reading time:
In 1938, Stephen Spender imagined a ‘revolution in the ideas of drama’, a theatre that could both deal with the complex socio-politics of the decade and take on new aesthetic challenges. The trouble, of course, was what this drama might look like in practice. In fact, in addressing the multifarious artistic and political disputes of this period, drama in the 1930s resists easy critical definition, residing in a liminal sense betwixt and between positions, terminology, and aesthetics. It can be read as highbrow, lowbrow, or middlebrow, with many individual examples flitting between these permeable categories.
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