Interpretations of MAJOR BARBARA George Bernard Shaw HB

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

Each volume of TWENTIETH CENTURY INTERPRETATIONS presents the best of modern commentary on a great work of literature, and an original introduction to that work by an outstanding authority. Analyzing themes, style, genre, structural elements, artistic influences, and historical background, the essays define the place of the work in its tradition and make clear its significance for readers of today.

George Bernard Shaw called Major Barbara both "a parable" and "a discussion in three acts." The essays in this collection go further than Shaw's enigmatic description. They present a rounded, modern, critical portrait of the mythical life of literature's most idealistic, zealous Salvation Army lass.

Rose Zimbardo, in her Introduction, praises Shaw's dramatic masterpiece as "a comedy about comedy." Other articles emphasize the genius of its artistic structure, symbolic design, and comic theme.

The eleven essays in the book -- most of them selected from recent Shavian criticism -- range from Joseph Frank's comparison of Major Barbara and Dante's Divine Comedy to Donald Costello's fascinating account of the film version of the play. Taken together, these analyses provide, as Zimbardo says, "as many angles as possible" for viewing a comedy which is "one of the great incarnations of comic form."

ROSE ZIMBARDO, editor of this volume in the Twentieth Century Interpretations series, is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She has done a book on the form of satire in Wycherley's plays, as well as several critical articles on structural design in Shakespeare's plays and in such modern dramas as those of Lorca and Genet.

CONTENTS:

Introduction, by Rose Zimbardo

Part One - Interpretations

• Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theater, by Martin Meisel
• Major Barbara: Shaw's "Divine Comedy," by Joseph Frank
• Assault on Idealism: Major Barbara, by Anthony S. Abbott
• The Undershaft Maxims, by Bernard Dukore
• Major Barbara, by Margery M. Morgan
• The Wit and Satire of George Bernard Shaw, by Fred Mayne

Part Two - View Points

• Eric Bentley
• Harold Fromm
• Francis Fergusson
• Donald Costello

Chronology of Important Dates
Notes on the Editor and Contributors
Selected Bibliography

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