A Memory of Two Mondays

Description

This Student Edition of A Memory of Two Mondays is perfect for students of literature and drama and offers an unrivalled and comprehensive guide to Miller's play. It features an extensive introduction by Joshua Polster which includes a chronology of Miller's life and times, a summary of the plot and commentary on the characters, themes, language, context and production history of the play. Together with over twenty questions for further study and detailed notes on words and phrases from the text, this is the definitive edition of the play. The one-act play A Memory of Two Mondays (1955) is one of Miller's most overtly autobiographical works. It chronicles the playwright at the age of eighteen during the early 1930s when he briefly worked at an auto parts warehouse in New York to save enough money to attend college. More than just autobiographical, the play captures the sociopolitical climate of the Great Depression. It deeply resonates and brings to the surface the cultural concerns and anxieties of the period. The setting, characters, theme, style, structure and language all exemplify the social and economic tensions of the country when it was at its lowest point in the Depression, and when the country, as Miller saw it, needed a sense of hope, endurance, and solidarity. At the same time, the play speaks to the 1950s, when the country was being torn apart by McCarthyism. A Memory of Two Mondays responded to a culture caught in the grip of a Communist hysteria that turned people against each other.

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was arguably the most important playwright of the twentieth century whose oeuvre includes novels, screenplays, essays and an autobiography. Besides individual play editions, six volumes of his plays and a volume of his theatre essays are published by Methuen Drama. Joshua Polster is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at Emerson College, Boston, USA, and Vice President of the Arthur Miller Society. He is author of Rethinking Arthur Miller: Symbol and Structure.