This book explores the way in which doubling takes place in several novels, films, and dramas, primarily focusing on modern drama and exploring how five Greek myths – Oedipus, Narcissus, Dionysus, Orestes, and Demeter – inform the literature. Taking a psychological/mythical approach, this book explores the inner divisions that lead to boundary loss and the search for the self that may lead to boundaries found. The contention of the book is that the oedipal search for self has been replaced in modern literature by individuals caught up in a narcissistic culture. Katherine H. Burkman explores plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman, and Will Eno.

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Reviews

"Katherine H. Burkman doubles down on doubling, looking again at the resonances between modern drama and patterns of ancient myth. Her work not only revisits versions of mythical doubles as they reappear in plays by Beckett, Pinter, O'Neill, Shepard, Norman, and Ibsen, but also echoes the mythic in the original verse that frames the study's analytic excursions. The Drama of the Double clarifies and complicates modern western drama's links to the past, while enacting contemporary insights about drama's fundamental repertoire." - Judith Roof, William Shakespeare Chair in English, Rice University, USA

"The Drama of the Double may not be long, but it is a surprisingly big book in that it deals with a wide range of literary texts, ancient and modern, written by a vast number of major (and some minor) authors in a startling array of forms and genres (drama, film, prose fiction, and more), usually in a manner that is detailed, focused and anything but cursory or glancing. At any rate, I suspect I am not alone in rejoicing when I see any literary critic or scholar focus on what the text has to say on its own - on, that is, the textual representations of character, action, thought, feeling, and ethical quality that are the necessary conditions of every text's intelligibility and worth, as is the case with Burkman's book." - James Battersby, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University, USA

"Katherine H. Burkman doubles down on doubling, looking again at the resonances between modern drama and patterns of ancient myth. Her work not only revisits versions of mythical doubles as they reappear in plays by Beckett, Pinter, O'Neill, Shepard, Norman, and Ibsen, but also echoes the mythic in the original verse that frames the study's analytic excursions. The Drama of the Double clarifies and complicates modern western drama's links to the past, while enacting contemporary insights about drama's fundamental repertoire." - Judith Roof, William Shakespeare Chair in English, Rice University, USA

"The Drama of the Double may not be long, but it is a surprisingly big book in that it deals with a wide range of literary texts, ancient and modern, written by a vast number of major (and some minor) authors in a startling array of forms and genres (drama, film, prose fiction, and more), usually in a manner that is detailed, focused and anything but cursory or glancing. At any rate, I suspect I am not alone in rejoicing when I see any literary critic or scholar focus on what the text has to say on its own - on, that is, the textual representations of character, action, thought, feeling, and ethical quality that are the necessary conditions of every text's intelligibility and worth, as is the case with Burkman's book." - James Battersby, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University, USA

About the author

Katherine H. Burkman is Professor Emerita in the Department of English at The Ohio State University, USA. She has published eleven books and numerous articles on modern drama, and has also published various plays, poems, and short stories. She founded and served as Artistic Director of Women at Play for twelve years, is presently a member of Wild Women Writing, and continues to act and direct.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: The Drama of the Double
Book Subtitle: Permeable Boundaries
Authors: Katherine H. Burkman
Series Title: What is Theatre?
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137573889
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-56606-5Published: 30 November 2015
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-57388-9Published: 29 April 2016
Series ISSN: 2945-6037
Series E-ISSN: 2945-6045
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 182
Topics: Performing Arts, Film History, Personality and Social Psychology, Literary Theory, Cultural Theory, Theatre History

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front Matter