Transfiguring Tragedy

"From his earliest writings, Eugene O'Neill explored depth as a dramatic theme and a theatrical effect, insisting that being in the world required a modern re-thinking, even-or especially-on stage in the USA. Ryder Thornton has shown how O'Neill's inquiry, undertaken by a self-taught playwright who failed to finish his first year at college, can be understood in terms of three of the most formidable philosophers of the nineteenth century and, furthermore, how their ideas led to the artist's profound reframing of modern drama."

William Davies King, Distinguished Professor of Theater and Dance, University of California Santa Barbara

"Transfiguring Tragedy interweaves clear-eyed interpretations of Eugene O'Neill's three foundational philosophers with masterful readings of the early plays-from the philosophical underpinnings of his earliest one-acts A Wife for a Life and The Web, to the designation of inaugural full-lengths Bread and Butter and Beyond the Horizon as 'tragedies of ownness,' to various philosophical syntheses like the Apollonian-Dionysian conflict in his expressionistic tours de force The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape. Thornton's boldly inclusive examination of O'Neill's naturalistic Anna Christie shows how the ever-enigmatic play was inspired by Mencken's translation of Nietzsche's The Antichrist and layered with influences that include Nietzsche, Stirner, Eastern philosophy, and Christian symbolism. With a keen intellect, Ryder Thornton has assembled a splendidly researched philosophical cosmology for America's master dramatist."

Robert M. Dowling, author of Eugene O'Neill: A Life in Four Acts