Memory in Play

"Memory in Play" makes evident that memory, though critically neglected, is as significant as race, gender, and class as a feature of dramatic character construction. Favorini skillfully argues that dramatic models of memory need to be reckoned along with the constructions of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in order to render a full account of the history of memory. Through this lens, the work of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, and Strindberg, as well as such pillars of twentieth-century drama as Pirandello, O'Neill, Wilder, Sherwood, Williams, Miller, Anouilh, Beckett, Pinter, Friel, Shepard, Kennedy, and Wilson are explored. By offering a vantage point for recognizing how dramatists have contributed to the conception of memory alongside other "memographers," irrespective of discipline, a lingua franca emerges for discussing a phenomenon studied from the perspectives of so many theoretical bases.