August Strindberg

The recent sesquicentennial of August Strindberg's (1849-1912) birth was an appropriate occasion for investigating the role of this towering figure in Nordic literature. By Eugene O'Neill once labeled the most modern of moderns, Strindberg the playwright has commanded a prophetic influence on 20th century drama and theater, and his voluminous production in several other genres continues to constitute a watershed and some of the highpoints in Swedish letters. Yet, Strindberg remains as controversial today as he was in his lifetime. The nature and degree of his modernity are still under discussion, and so is the impact of his remarkable genre-proliferation and border-transgressing Swedishness. Once considered too unruly for the pillars of society and too pious for the radicals, his artistic and existential points of gravity remain in critical dispute. Generally subjected to traditional modes of inquiry, Strindberg's complexity calls for new critical approaches. Strindberg and the Other brings together scholars, younger and older, from Scandinavia and abroad, who either venture such new approaches or engage their practitioners in fruitful dialogue. Especially promising among the volume's methodological and theoretical propositions is the notion of the 'other' and 'otherness.' Indeed, the image of August Strindberg himself is quite an-other at this millennium than it was just half a century ago.

August Strindberg (1849-1912) was one of the great innovators of modern drama as well as a novelist, poet, and master of the Swedish language. In this collection, Selected Poems of August Strindberg, editor and translator Lotta M. Lofgren has chosen poems from all three volumes of Strindberg's verse -- Poems in Verse and Prose, Sleepwalking Nights on Awake Days, and Word Play and Minor Art -- to illustrate to the English-speaking reader the development, strengths, and versatility of Strindberg the poet. Lofgren explains, "Although August Strindberg is internationally acknowledged as a pioneering realist, expressionist, and surrealist playwright, his poetry is still relatively unknown outside Sweden. The only English translation of [his] poems to date is the 1978 translation of Sleepwalking Nights by Arvid Paulson ... that gives an incomplete and misleading picture of Strindberg's poetry." Lofgren's translation seeks to correct that picture. Strindberg's stature as a dramatist alone may be adequate justification for offering a translation of his verse, but his poetry stands well on its own. All three volumes broke new ground and paved the way for younger generations of poets. Lofgren hopes that her translation will not only introduce Strindberg's verse to English-speaking readers but will also inspire other scholars to revisit his poetry and give it the attention it deserves. Selected Poems of August Strindberg received the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Translation Prize

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Dramatist, theatre practitioner, novelist, and painter, August Strindberg’s diverse dramatic output embodied the modernist sensibility. He was above all one of the most radical innovators of Western theatre. This book provides an insightful assessment of Strindberg’s vital contribution to the dramatic arts, while placing his creative process and experimental approach within a wider cultural context. Eszter Szalczer explores Strindberg’s re-definition of drama as a fluid, constantly evolving form that profoundly influenced playwriting and theatrical production from the German Expressionists to the Theatre of the Absurd. Key productions of Strindberg’s plays are analysed, examining his theatre as a living voice that continues to challenge audiences, critics, and even the most innovative directors. August Strindberg provides an essential and accessible guide to the playwright’s work and illustrates the influence of his drama on our understanding of contemporary theatre.

Argues that Strindberg intentionally directed his controversial emotional life to his art and purposely created personal chaos in order to generate his creative inspiration

August Strindberg and Visual Culture addresses the multiplicity of Strindberg's artistic and literary output. The book charts the vital intersections between theatre, aesthetic theory, and visual elements in his work that have been left largely unexplored. Rather than following traditional genre-bound critical approaches, this book focuses on the intermediality of individual works, the corpus as a whole, and their connections to a wide array of historical and contemporary artists, writers, photographers, film, theatre and museum practitioners. The book is beautifully illustrated, with many never-before-seen images from Strindberg's work, and includes contributions from actress Liv Ullmann, director Robert Wilson, and curator and museum director Daniel Birnbaum.