The Crucible (by Arthur Miller)

Miller, Arthur - 1915–, American dramatist, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Michigan, 1938. Miller's plays are concerned with morality and the pressures exerted on people by family and society. His masterpiece, Death of a Salesman (1949; Pulitzer Prize), is the story of a salesman betrayed by his own hollow values and those of American society. The Crucible (1953) is both a dynamic Read More...

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The Crucible (by Arthur Miller)

1.

Preface to Drama: An Introduction to Dramatic Literature and Theater Art (Chap. VIII Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible")
by Charles W. Cooper. 776 pgs.

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Title Page

Foreword

Contents

Part One: The Preface

I: Preliminary

II: The Playscript

Scene I

Scene II

III: The Stageplay

IV: The Play

V: The Drama

H.M.S. Pinafore or the Lass That Loved a Sailor

Part Two: The Plays

I: Antigone

Scene I

Scene II

Scene IV

Scene V

II: Othello

Act One

Scene III: The Council Chamber.

Act Two

Scene II: A Street.

Act Three

Scene II: A Room in the Citadel.

Scene IV: Before the Citadel.

Act Four

Scene II: A Room in the Citadel.

Scene III: State Bedroom in the Citadel.

Act Five

III: The Ridiculous PrÆCieuses

Scene I: La Grange, Du Croisy

Scene IV: Madelon, Cathos, Gorgibus.

Scene V: Cathos, Madelon.

Scene VII: Mascarille, Two Chairmen.

Scene VIII: Marotte, Mascarillie.

Scene X: Cathos, Madelon, Mascarille, Marotte.

Scene XI: Cathos, Madelon, Jodelet, Mascarille, Marotte, Almanzor.

Scene XII: Lucile, CÉLimÈne, Cathos, Madelon, Mascarille, Jodelet, Marotte, Almanzor, and Fiddlers.

Scene XIII: Du Croisy, la Grange, Cathos, Madelon, Lucile, CÉLimÈne, Jodelet, Mascarille, Marotte, and Fiddlers.

Scene XVI: Madelon, Cathos, Jodelet, Mascarille, and Fiddlers.

Scene. XVIII: Gorgibus, Madelon, Cathos, and Fiddlers.

IV: Hedda Gabler

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

V: Candida

Act I

Act II

VI: Life with Father: A Period Comedy by Lindsay and Crouse

Act One

Scene II

Scene II

Act Three

VII: The Glass Menagerie

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

VIII: The Crucible

Act One: (An Overture)

Act Two

Act Four

Appendix
2.

Understanding The Crucible: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents
by Claudia Durst Johnson. 244 pgs.

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Ideal for student research and class discussion, this interdisciplinary casebook provides a rich variety of primary historical documents and commentary on The Crucible within the context of two relevant historical periods: the Salem witch trials of 1692 and the "Red Scare" of the 1950s, when the play was written. The play is a testimony to the inherent dangers Miller sees in any community seized by hysteria. The Salem witch-hunts, which Miller uses to illustrate such a community, were echoed more than 250 years later in the hunt for subversives during the "Red Scare" of the 1950s. The authors provide literary and dramatic analysis of the play, comprehensive historical background, relevant documents of the periods, and questions and projects to help students in their understanding of The Crucible and the issues it raises.

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Title Page

Additional Info

Title Page

Publication/Copyright Page

Copyright Acknowledgments

Contents

Preface

1: Literary Analysis

2: Primed for Hysteria

3: Witchcraft in Salem

4: Witch-Hunts in the 1950s

5: 1990s Witch-Hunts

Index

About the Authors
3.

The Crucible (literary criticism)
by Harold Bloom. 194 pgs.

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"I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history", Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence".

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Title Page

The Crucible

Contents

Editor's Note

Introduction

The Crucible

Precision and Pseudo Precision in the Crucible

The Long Shadow of the Law: the Crucible

Arthur Miller's the Crucible: Background and Sources

John Proctor's Playing in the Crucible

The Crucible of History: Arthur Miller's John Proctor

History, Myth, and Name Magic in Arthur Miller's the Crucible

History and Other Spectres in Arthur Miller's the Crucible

The Crucible

Betrayal and Blessedness: Explorations of Feminine Power in the Crucible, a View from the Bridge, and After the Fall

John Proctor and the Crucible of Individuation in Arthur Miller's the Crucible

Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's the Crucible: a Feminist Reading

Arthur Miller's "Weight of Truth" in the Crucible

Chronology

Contributors

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index
4.

Student Companion to Arthur Miller (Chap. 7 "House Un-American Activities Committee: The Crucible")
by Susan C. W. Abbotson. 174 pgs.

Book

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This critical introduction to Arthur Miller provides an indispensable aid for students and general readers to understand the depth and complexity of some of America's most important dramatic works. Beginning with a discussion of his life, this work traces not only Miller's theatrical career, but his formulative experiences with the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Detailed discussions of eight important plays are organized around the social and moral themes Miller derived from such events; these themes are evident in in such works as Death of A Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and All My Sons. By placing Miller within the context of his times, this discussion reveals how he was influenced by and reacted to the major events in his own life and in American culture. Analysis of his more recent works such as The American Clock, Broken Glass and The Ride Down Mt. Morgan illustrate the consistency of Miller's strong moral vision, and his continuing innovative contributions to American theatre.

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Title Page

Contents

Series Foreword

Preface

1: The Life of Arthur Miller

2: Literary Heritage

3: Tragedy: Death of a Salesman (1949)

4: The Family: All My Sons (1947) and A View from the Bridge (1956)

5: The Depression: The American Clock (1980)

6: The Holocaust: After the Fall (1964) and Broken Glass (1994)

7: House Un-American Activities Committee: The Crucible (1953)

8: Continuing Concerns: The Ride Down Mt. Mo an (1991)

Bibliography

Index

About the Author
5.

Arthur Miller ("History and Other Spectres in The Crucible" p. 127)
by Harold Bloom. 157 pgs.

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-- Brings together the best criticism on the most widely read poets, novelists, and playwrights
-- Presents complex critical portraits of the most influential writers in the English-speaking world -- from the English medievalists to contemporary writers

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Title Page

Arthur Miller

Contents

Editor's Note

Introduction

Arthur Miller: an Overview

Strength and Weakness in Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman: Tragic Myth in the Modern Theatre

Arthur Miller: Between Pathos and Tragedy

The Action and Its Significance: Arthur Miller's Struggle with Dramatic Form

The Drama of Forgiveness

The Perspective of a Playwright

A View from the Bridge and the Expansion of Vision

Drama from a Living Center

History and Other Spectres in the Crucible

Chronology

Contributors

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index
6.

Babylonian Confusion and Biblical Inversion in Miller's The Crucible, in Journal of Evolutionary Psychology
by Frank Ardolino. 8 pgs.

Journal Article
7.

The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller (Chap. 3 "The Crucible to A Memory of Two Mondays")
by Terry Otten. 280 pgs.

Book

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For more than fifty years Arthur Miller has been a dramatist. He has been a chronicler of American culture, which he has both celebrated and criticized. The Temptation of Innocence in the dramas of Arthur Miller examines all of Miller's plays, from his unpublished undergraduate dramas written at the University of Michigan to Mr. Peter's Connections, his last performed play. Terry Otten offers a broad critical review and assessment of Miller's plays in light of the major revival of Miller's work in the past decade and a growing critical reassessment of his work by the scholarly community.
Focusing on the temptation of innocence, a recurrent theme in Miller's work, Otten explores the conflict between innocence and personal responsibility from such widely acclaimed early plays as Death of a Salesman, which forges a "tragedy of the common man, " to his later, near postmodern texts, which treat memory in very different ways. Still locating the presentness of the past as a center of meaning in characters who follow Willy Loman, Miller continues to investigate the role innocence plays in the lives of his more modern characters.
Otten contends that, for over a half century, Miller examined the relationship between self and society in remarkably consistent terms while adapting his art to contemporary changes in concepts of reality. Fully documented and thoroughly researched, this book will prove a valuable source for later studies of Miller and a standard reference for examining the entire range of the plays. Otten avoids critical jargon, making this book an appealing choice for a general audience interested in literature and American culture.

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Title Page

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Acknowledgments

The Temptation of Innocence in the Dramas of Arthur Miller

1: All My Sons and Before

2: Death of a Salesman

3: The Crucible to a Memory of Two Mondays

4: The Misfits and After the Fall

5: Incident at Vichy to Creation of the World and Other Business

6: Other Plays of the 1970s and 1980s

7: Last Plays of the Century

Works Cited

Index
8.

Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender ("Witch-Hunting, Thwarted Desire, and Girl Power: Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953)" begins on p. 82)
by Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber. 358 pgs.

Book

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This unique reference offers alternate approaches to reading traditional literature, as well as suggestions for expanding the canon to include more gender sensitive works. Covering 96 of the most frequently taught works of fiction, essays offer teachers, librarians, and students fresh insights into the female perspective in literature.

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Title Page

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Women’s Roles and Influence in Mark Twain’s the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

The War against the Feminine: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Doctor She! Helena and Sisterhood in William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (ca. 1602–1603)

For Further Reading

Mother, Wife, Fallen Woman: Marital Choice in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877)

Young Lady or slut: Identity and Voice in Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John (1983)

Righteous Activist or Confrontational Madwoman: Sophocles’ Antigone (441 B.C.E.)

Work Cited

Female Resistance to Gender Conformity in Kate Chopin’s the Awakening (1899)

For Further Reading

Mothers and Children in Barbara Kingsolver’s the Bean Trees (1988)

William Faulkner’s Male Myth: the Bear (1942)

More Than Skin Deep: Robin Mckinley’s Beauty: a Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast (1978)

Sylvia Plath’s the Bell Jar: Trapped by the Feminine Mystique (1963)

Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987): Maternal Possibilities, Sisterly Bonding

Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945, 1991) and Black Women

Works Cited

Culture, Tradition, Family: Gender Roles in Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima (1972)

Girls into Women: Culture, Nature, and Self-Loathing in Toni Morrison’s the Bluest Eye (1970)

Founding Women’s History: Christine de Pizan Writes the Book of the City of Ladies (1405)

Works Cited

A Dystopic Vision of Gender in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932)

An Immigrant Girl’s Quest for the American Dream in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers (1925)

For Further Reading

As My Mother’s Daughter: Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat (1994)

Non-Conformists and Traditionalists: Buchi Emecheta’s the Bride Price (1976)

The Symbolic Annihilation of Women in Jack London’s the Call of the Wild (1904)

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: Gender in the Middle Ages (ca. 1388–1400)

Sex, Violence, and Peter Pan: J.D.Salinger’s the Catcher in the Eye (1951)

Paths to Liberation in Alice Walker’s the Color Purple (1982)

The Women in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866)

Witch-Hunting, Thwarted Desire, and Girl Power: Arthur Miller’s the Crucible (1953)

A Nice Girl Ought to Know! Henry James’ Daisy Miller (1878)

Redefining Female Absence in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949)

Black and White Womanhood in Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose: Mammies, Ladies, Rebels (1986)

Work Cited

Anne Frank’s the Diary of a Young Girl: Writing a Self—the Female Adolescent Voice (1952)

For Further Reading

The Slammed Door That Still Reverberates: Henrik Ibsen’s a Doll’s House (1879)

Frozen Lives: Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911)

Catherine Barkley: Ernest Hemingway’s a Farewell to Arms (1929)

The Invisible Black Female Artist in Alice Childress’ Florence (1950)

For Further Reading

Daring Creation: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818, Revised 1831)

Shattered Rainbows in Translucent Glass: Tennessee Williams’ the Glass Menagerie (1945)

What It Means to Be a Lady: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936)

Works Cited

Patriarchy and Property: Women in Pearl S.Buck’s the Good Earth (1931)

No Expectations at All: Women in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1861)

Works Cited

Beautiful Fools and Hulking Brutes: F.Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby (1925)

Reading between the Lines: Connecting with Gertrude and Ophelia in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (ca. 1600)

Freedom Reconsidered: Margaret Atwood’s the Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

Work Cited

When Women Shape the World: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915)

Works Cited

Girls and Women in Sandra Cisneros’ the House on Mango Street (1984)

Living in a Borderland: Cultural Expectations of Gender in Julia Alvarez’ How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991)

A Song of Freedom: Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

Good Mother, Bad Mother in Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1964)

Bobbie Ann Mason’s in Country (1985): a Girl’s Quest for Her Father and Herself

The Invisible Women in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952)

Works Cited

Be True to Yourself: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847)

Thinking Different in Amy Tan’s the Joy Luck Club (1989)

Gender Bending: Ursula le Guin’s the Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

What a Teacher Learns: Ernest J.Games’ a Lesson before Dying (1993)

Works Cited

The Foreignness of Femininity in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900)

Boys’ Club—no Girls Allowed: Absence as Presence in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954)

Unnatural: Women in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (ca. 1606)

Emma Rouault Bovary: Gendered Reflections in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)

(Re)surfacing Main Street (1920) by Sinclair Lewis

Critiquing “the We of Me”: Gender Roles in Carson Mccullers’ the Member of the Wedding (1946)

Works Cited

Beauty and Gender in Alix Kates Shulman’s Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972)

Where No Role Fits: Maggie’s Predicament in George Eliot’s the Mill on the Floss (1860)

For Further Reading

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick: Epic Tale of Male Destruction (1851)

For Further Reading

Images of Possibility: Gender Identity in Willa Cather’s My Àntonia (1918)

Work Cited

The Good Woman: Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve (1954)

Boyhood Unraveled: Elie Wiesel’s Night (1960)

Sexuality as Rebellion in George Orwell’s 1984 (1949)

Homer’s Odyssey: “the Iliad’s Wife” (ca. 700 B.C.E.)

Jocasta and Her Daughters: Women in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (ca. 430 B.C.E.)

Women Stripped of Humanity: John Steinbeck’s of Mice and Men (1937)

Role Traps in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

Under the Burden of Yellow Peril: Race, Class, and Gender in Yoshiko Uchida’s Picture Bride (1987)

For Further Reading

Woman and Art in James Joyce’s a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Truths Universally Acknowledged: Stereotypes of Women in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Undue Influence in Muriel Spark’s the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Exploring the Gender Puzzle of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912)

Work Cited

Seasoned with Quiet Strength: Black Womanhood in Lorraine Hansberry’s a Raisin in the Sun (1959)

Heroism against the Odds: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (ca. 1599)

Molly Bolts and Lifelines: Rita Mae Brown’s Ruby Fruit Jungle (1973)

A as Hester’s Autonomy in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s the Scarlet Letter (1850)

Female Freedom in Other Places and Inner Spaces: Suzanne Fisher Staples’ Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (1989)

For Further Reading

Gender in Silas Marner by George Eliot (1861)

Empowerment through Writing in Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1979)

Wearing “her Favour in the Battle”: the “go-Between” in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1913)

Riding Tennessee Williams’ a Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Agent or Victim: Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles (1891)

An African-American Woman’s Journey of Self-Discovery in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Fragmenting Culture, Fragmenting Lives: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1959)

Just a Lady: Gender and Power in Harper Lee’s to Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Women Righting Wrongs: Morality and Justice in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916)

For Further Reading

For Such as We Are Made Of, Such We Be: the Construction of Gender in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will (first Performed 1602)

Work Cited

The Power of Mothers in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

A Chinese-American Woman Warrior Comes of Age: Maxine Hong Kingston’s the Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976)

The Will to Survive in Gloria Naylor’s the Women of Brewster Place (1982)

Procrustean Bed: Gender Roles in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)

Negotiating Tight Spaces: Women in Michael Dorris’ a Yellow Raft in Blue Water (1988)

Index of Literary Works by Author

Subject Index

About the Editors and Contributors
9.

Playwright Versus Director: Authorial Intentions and Performance Interpretations (discussion of The Crucible begins on p. 96)
by Jeane Luere, Sidney Berger. 180 pgs.

Book

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Giving equal space to the sanctity of script and the artistic freedom of directors, this book addresses the difficulties encountered by playwrights and directors as they bring a script to the stage. Inspired directors can help a writer of genius turn his play into exciting theatre, but playwrights find that giving directors leeway to interpret and modify "text" can result in directors' overriding authorial intentions. This book presents the best that has been written by literary theorists on the current definitions of "text" and attempts to depart from quick rule-of-thumb assessments of the problem.

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Title Page

Recent Titles in Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One: Theories of Authorship and Interpretation

1: Literary Assumptions About Text

2: Literature's New Criticism Applied to Theatre

Part Two: Remarks of Playwrights and Directors

3: Alley Forum: Playwrights, Directors, and the Postmodern Stage

4: Robert Anderson, Playwright

5: Sidney Berger, Director

6: Danny Mann, Director, and Edward Albee, Playwright

7: Lanford Wilson, Playwright

8: Robert Wilson, Performer, Director, Writer

9: Jose Quintero, Director

Part Three: Tiers of Director/Playwright Interchange: Five Case Studies

10: A "Director's Director"

11: A Tyrant Director?

12: A Director's Distortion of a Modern Classic: Arthur Miller's Shift in Stance

13: A Playwright-Director Opens Up a Classic: Albee's Direction of Beckett

14: Director, Playwright, and Cast: Caryl Churchill's Approach to Text

Part Four: Theatre Aesthetics and the Law

15: Contractual Provisions of the Dramatists' Guild, Inc.

16: Collaboration and American Law

Afterword

Works Cited

General Bibliography

Index

About the Editors

Books	Journals	Magazines
Newspapers	Encyclopedia	Research Topics

Books	Journals	Magazines
Newspapers	Encyclopedia	Research Topics

The Crucible (by Arthur Miller)

The Crucible (by Arthur Miller)

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