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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Tragedy of Jimmy Porter: Overview of the critical opinions about "Look Back in Anger" and development of a thesis

The Tragedy of Jimmy Porter: Overview of the critical opinions about "Look Back in Anger" and development of a thesis

Prexl, Lydia

Paperback

Literary CriticismGeneral Reference

ISBN10: 3640349660
ISBN13: 9783640349661
Publisher: Grin Verlag
Published: Jun 26 2009
Pages: 60
Weight: 0.20
Height: 0.14 Width: 5.83 Depth: 8.27
Language: English
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: It is widely accepted that John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger was a turning-point in the history of British theatre, a milestone introducing the era of the New British Drama. Osborne remembers: On 8 May 1956 [...] Look Back in Anger had its opening at the Royal Court Theatre. This [...] particular date seems to have become fixed in the memories of theatrical historians and Lacey emphasises: The moment of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger [...] was undoubtedly a symbolic one in the history of post-war British theatre and of post-war culture generally. However, Look Back in Anger was not perceived as a break-through right from the beginning. Rather, Osborne had to cope with shattering criticism and at first, his play was a crushing defeat. Osborne himself summarized the reactions towards Look Back in Anger in his autobiography about thirty years later: There was a vehement, undisputed judgement: the play was a palpable miss. Nearly all reviews focused on the play's hero Jimmy Porter, whose nature they depicted as the reason for the essential wrongness of the play. Jimmy was seen as a bitter young misfit, a boor, self-pitying, self-dramatising rebel and a cynical, neurotic [young man] of working-class stock, whose continuous tirade against life [...] ha[d] a deadening effect upon the whole play. Cecil Wilson sharpened the criticism when she exclaimed that Jimmy Porter's bitterness and his savage and often vulgar talk crie[d] out for a knife. However, the attitudes towards Osborne and his first play changed with the publication of Kenneth Tynan's testimony in the Sunday newspaper a week later stating that he could hardly love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger. It is the best young play of its decade. This provocative review suddenly shed a new light on the

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