Edward Albee

Matthew Roudané is Regents' Professor of English at Georgia State University. He has published widely on various aspects of American drama, particularly the theatre of major figures including Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Edward Albee. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (1997) and of The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard (2002).

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I. Albee's Life and World: 1. Life; 2. Overview: the theater of Edward Albee; 3. Contexts; Part II. The Plays: 4. Ritualized forms of expiation; 5. Challenging Broadway; 6. 'The greatest sin in living is doing it badly – stupidly, or as if you weren't really alive'; 7. A quest for consciousness; 8. As I lay dying; 9. A theater of loss; Part III. Dialogues: 10. Critical reception; Epilogue: final curtain; Notes; Further reading; Index.

'Matthew Roudané has been one of Albee's most astute and discerning critics for more than thirty years. In his energetic, engaging, and precise prose, he offers analyses of twenty-five Albee plays, enriched by the playwright's words from Roudané's many interviews with him. This book is accessible to the general reader and theatergoer, but rewards the specialist just as well. Overviews of Albee's life and work establish the themes that undergird Roudané's treatment of the plays – Albee's existential sense of human loss and being lost balanced by a profound sense of hope, his conviction of the preeminence of consciousness in living human life to the full, and his belief in the regenerative powers of the imagination. The coherent vision Roudané brings to, or reveals in, Albee's work, from The Zoo Story (1959) to Me, Myself, & I (2008), is simply stunning.' Brenda Murphy, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus