English and American Drama: Works and Critiques

Author: Liu Haiping Zhu Xuefeng Zhao Yu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: To meet the challenges of the new century, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press invited over 50 English educators from 25 major foreign language universities and key comprehensive universities across the country to write a series of undergraduate textbooks for English majors in new-era universities. This series of textbooks is divided into several sections, including language knowledge and skills, linguistics and literature, language and culture, humanities, testing and teaching methods, etc. With innovative writing concepts, distinctive features, a grand system, and authoritative authors, it has been included in the National Ministry of Education's "Five-Year Plan" key textbook project. This book provides basic knowledge on the characteristics, elements, types, and styles of dramatic works. It selects representative works of major playwrights from the UK and the US, and through guided reading, discussions, watching videos, and even staging performances, it aims to cultivate students' fundamental abilities and necessary skills to understand, appreciate, and critique English and American dramatic works. Each work is preceded by a brief introduction to the author's life, and some language difficulties and sociocultural backgrounds are briefly annotated in Chinese or English. The thought-provoking questions at the end of each work can help teachers organize classroom discussions or assign homework. The book also includes additional scripts to make the selected works more relevant to contemporary life, offering teachers and students more choices and enabling students to gain benefits from multiple perspectives and levels.