Frank Wedekind

(Applause Books). Spring's Awakening is a tragi-comedy of teenage sex. Its fourteen-year-old heroine, Wendla, is killed by abortion pills. The young Moritz, terrorized by the world around him, and especially by his teachers, shoots himself. The ending seems likely to be the suicide of Moritz's friend, Melchior, but in a confrontation with a mysterious stranger (the famous Masked Man) he finally manages to shed his illusions and face the consequences.

Tragedy of Childhood

Spring's Awakening

Philip Ward

At once a dystopian fantasy and a critique of sexual norms, Mine-Haha describes a unique boarding institution for girls—part idyllic refuge, part prison—where pupils are trained only in the physical arts of movement, dance, and music, before issuing them into an adult world for which they have (unwittingly) been prepared. The narrator is an old woman recalling her strange childhood and the story is focused through the eyes of her earlier self. Praised by Leon Trotsky in 1908 for its progressive outlook, this symbolist novella is here presented alongside two rare, complementary short-fiction pieces: "The Burning of Egliswyl" and "The Sacrificial Lamb."

Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls

Fruhlings Erwachen

THE STORY: First performed under heavy censorship in Germany in 1906, Frank Wedekind's play closed after one night in New York in 1917 amid public outrage and charges of obscenity. The play's content was radical indeed: teenage sex, suicide, aborti

A Children's Tragedy

Spring Awakening

Pandora's Box; a Tragedy in Three Acts, Frank Wedekind, Tr. by Samuel A. Eliot, Jr

Earth Spirit- A Tragedy in Four Acts (Lulu

Lulu. Erdgeist. Die Buchse der Pandora.

Lulu Plays and Other Sex Tragedies (German Expressionism)

Pandora's box; a tragedy in three acts

Frühlingserwachen

Diary of an Erotic Life

L'éveil du printemps, tragédie d'enfants en trois actes

Sigmund Freud

Il fallut seize ans pour que la première pièce importante de Wedekind fût autorisée par la censure allemande. Il avait écrit l'Eveil du printemps en 1890, à vingt-six ans. La pièce fut créée à Berlin en 1906, dans une mise en scène de Max Reinhardt. Comme les autres grandes pièces de l'auteur de Lulu, désormais un classique du théâtre expressionniste allemand, l'Eveil du printemps ne porte pas son âge. La curiosité infantile, le refoulement sexuel et la répression sur le sexe, la difficulté d'être un adolescent dans un monde de " grandes personnes ", l'éducation autoritaire ou libérale, ce sont les grands thèmes de l'œuvre. Wedekind n'est pourtant pas seulement un auteur " à thèses " comme il voulait être, mais aussi un grand poète de théâtre. On demeure stupéfait de la jeunesse, de la profondeur et de la présence d'une œuvre écrite quinze ans avant la publication des Trois essais sur la sexualité de Freud, qui commente la pièce à Vienne, en 1907. Le lendemain de la mort de Wedekind, en 1918, Brecht écrivait de son ami : " Comme Tolstoï et Strindberg, Frank Wedekind a été un des grands éducateurs de l'Europe moderne. Il semblait indestructible. " Son œuvre aujourd'hui semble indestructible, chargée de cette " vitalité intense " qu'admirait Brecht.

Tragédie enfantine (écrite de l'automne 1890 à Pâques 1891)

L'éveil du printemps

Frühlings Erwachen : Dramen

Lulu

Earth-spirit : a Tragedy in Four Acts

Erdgeist

A Tragedy in Three Acts

Pandora's Box

Felix und Galathea

Ödön von Horváth

Marieluise Fleisser

The three playwrights and four dramas of this volume, expertly introduced and edited by Margaret Herzfeld-Sander, show remarkable characteristics that would become fully integrated into modern and postmodern drama.

Early 20th-century German Plays

Two of Wedekind's most seminal plays, &quote;Earth Spirit&quote; and &quote;Pandora's Box&quote; both focus on the actions of the young heroine Lulu, who embodies both animal sensuality and waif-like innocence, as she escapes a life on the streets, receives a society education, marries, takes on various lovers, becomes a dancer in a revue, is imprisoned for murder, and encounters Jack the Ripper. When &quote;Earth Spirit&quote; was premiered Leipzig in 1898, Wedekind was vilified and persecuted for advocating unfeigned sexual pleasure and making his heroine a heartless whore. &quote;Death and Devil&quote; and &quote;Castle Wetterstein,&quote; the other plays that make up this volume, are essentially extensions of and complementary to the Lulu tragedies.

Lulu Plays

Frank Wedekind

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