Berkeley. 1982. University of California Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0520044428. 241 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Linda M. Robertson. keywords: Europe Scandinavia Sweden Literature Drama Translated Literature Criticism World Literature. DESCRIPTION - August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright, poet, and novelist, continues to be a strongly controversial and magnetic figure in contemporary literature. Even as audiences around the world respond to the raw power in his plays, critics search for ways to define that power. The focus of interpretation is commonly Strindberg's own life, not only because his passions and scandals were so avidly seized upon by the international press of his time but because his writings persistently avow their autobiographical origins. As Mr. Carlson says, For models, he used anyone he considered appropriate—himself, his three wives, his friends, his enemies—often doing little to dis- guise his original sources. he referred to his approach as vivisection; understandably, many of those he operated on howled in protest.' In Carlson's view, however, biographical criticism alone cannot adequately explain why audiences who know nothing of Strindberg's life continue to be attracted to his plays. The present book explores Strindberg's use of myth as a source that transcends private life and merely individual experience. Taking up eight of the major plays, Carlson shows in detail how Strindberg's dramatic writing crucially involves mythopoesis in a manner akin to that of Goethe and Dante. Like his predecessors, Strindberg reshaped traditional myth to fit a variety of expressive purposes. What emerges is a new view of Strindberg the artist: less bound to biographical interpretation than before and more firmly positioned in the continuity of world drama as a major poet and innovator. inventory #48266