Transfiguring Tragedy

This book demonstrates Eugene O'Neill's use of philosophy in the early period of his work and provides analyses of selected works from that era, concluding with The Hairy Ape, completed in 1921, as an illustration of the mastery he had achieved in dramatizing key concepts of philosophy.

Ryder Thornton is a Senior Professor of Practice in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Tulane University, USA.

1. Suffering and Solace: Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in the Early One-Act Plays 2. Rites of Passage: Suffering, Illusion, and Possession in the Glencairn Plays 3. Tragedies of Ownness: Stirner's Philosophy of Egoism in the First Full-length Plays 4. Drums and the Man: Ceremony, Power, and Race in The Emperor Jones 5. "New Forces Out of the Old": Nietzsche, Stirner, Christian Symbolism, and Vedantic Philosophy in "Anna Christie" 6. Apes and Ghosts: Philosophy, Tragedy, and Comedy in The Hairy Ape