Robert M. Farrington sheds new light on nine folk-inspired rural dramas produced by three European playwrights between 1885 and 1936: Spain's Federico Garcia Lorca, Ireland's John Millington Synge, and Germany's Gerhart Hauptmann. Through an analysis of the linguistic conventions of the three dramatists and by tying their plays' language to a myth/ritual content, this book defines the works as representative of a sub-genre, that is, lyric folkdrama. A sound/meaning nexus is identified as an essential ingredient of folkdrama. To clarify this relationship between sound and meaning and to establish a theoretical basis for the linguistic analysis, the study draws from works on myth, ritual, drama, and poetic language by Aristotle, Richard Wagner, Mircea Eliade, and Northrop Frye, as well as from critical studies by the structuralists Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Autorentext

The Author: Robert M. Farrington is an independent scholar living in New York State, where he teaches composition, literature, and E.S.L. at Bronx and Westchester community colleges. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University. A published poet, he is presently completing his first novel, a Native American captivity tale.

Zusammenfassung
"Robert M. Farrington's 'European Lyric Folkdrama: A Definition' is an extraordinary addition to the understanding of the literature of folkdrama. His critical insights into the rural dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann, Federico Garcia Lorca, and John Millington Synge, offer a redefinition of this genre." (Jane Frances Amler, Internationally Recognized Author of 'Christopher Columbus's Jewish Roots')