Vital Lie: Reality and Illusion in Modern Drama

by Anthony S. Abbott

The Vital Lie is the first book to examine the reality-illusion conflict in modern drama from Ibsen to present-day playwrights. The book questions why vital lies, lies necessary for life itself, are such an obsessive concern for playwrights of the last hundred years. Using the work of fifteen playwrights, Abbott seeks to discover if modern playwrights treat illusions as helpful or necessary to life, or as signals of sicknesses from which human beings...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0817303960
• ISBN13: 9780817303969
• Release Date: December 1988
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.