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Overview
Just prior to his death in 2005, August Wilson, arguably the most important American playwright of the last quarter-century, completed an ambitious cycle of ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century. Known as the Twentieth-Century Cycle or the Pittsburgh Cycle, the plays, which portrayed the struggles of African-Americans, won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, a Tony Award for Best Play, and seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle is the first volume devoted to the last five plays of the cycle individually—Jitney, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf—and in the context of Wilson's entire body of work.
Editor Alan Nadel's May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson, a work Henry Louis Gates called definitive, focused on the first five plays of Wilson's cycle. This new collection examines from myriad perspectives the way Wilson's final works give shape and focus to his complete dramatic opus. It contains an outstanding and diverse array of discussions from leading Wilson scholars and literary critics. Together, the essays in Nadel's two volumes give Wilson's work the breadth of analysis and understanding that this major figure of American drama merits.
Contributors
Herman Beavers
Yvonne Chambers
Soyica Diggs Colbert
Harry J. Elam, Jr.
Nathan Grant
David LaCroix
Barbara Lewis
Alan Nadel
Donald E. Pease
Sandra Shannon
Vivian Gist Spencer
Anthony Stewart
Steven C. Tracy
Dana Williams
Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon
Synopsis
Just prior to his death in 2005, August Wilson, arguably the most important American playwright of the last quarter-century, completed an ambitious cycle of ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century. Known as the Twentieth-Century Cycle or the Pittsburgh Cycle, the plays, which portrayed the struggles of African-Americans, won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, a Tony Award for Best Play, and seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle is the first volume devoted to the last five plays of the cycle individually—Jitney, Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf—and in the context of Wilson's entire body of work.
Editor Alan Nadel's May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson, a work Henry Louis Gates called definitive, focused on the first five plays of Wilson's cycle. This new collection examines from myriad perspectives the way Wilson's final works give shape and focus to his complete dramatic opus. It contains an outstanding and diverse array of discussions from leading Wilson scholars and literary critics. Together, the essays in Nadel's two volumes give Wilson's work the breadth of analysis and understanding that this major figure of American drama merits.
Contributors
Herman Beavers
Yvonne Chambers
Soyica Diggs Colbert
Harry J. Elam, Jr.
Nathan Grant
David LaCroix
Barbara Lewis
Alan Nadel
Donald E. Pease
Sandra Shannon
Vivian Gist Spencer
Anthony Stewart
Steven C.Tracy
Dana Williams
Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon
Library Journal
August Wilson's "Twentieth-Century Cycle," also known as the "Pittsburgh Cycle," consists of ten plays that chronicle the African American experience by decade from the 1900s to the 1990s. This collection of essays is a companion to Nadel's May All Your Fences Have Gates, which focuses on the first five plays in the cycle (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, and Two Trains Running). Here, the spotlight is turned to the other five plays, which complete it (Seven Guitars, Jitney, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf). The plays are considered from a variety of perspectives and set in cultural, historical, and social contexts as well as within the entire cycle. Several of the contributors, including Nadel, are also represented in the earlier compilation. The substantial list of works cited supplies ideas for further reading and study of this seminal playwright. VERDICT Recommended for literature and performing arts students.—Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L.