Love in Contemporary British Drama: Traditions and Transformations of a Cultural Emotion (CDE Studies, 31)

Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. __Love in Contemporary British Drama__ reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades. Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love’s compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present. Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

Despite the recent turn to affects and emotions in the humanities and despite the unceasing popularity of romantic and erotic love as a motif in fictional works of all genres, the subject has received surprisingly little attention in academic studies of contemporary drama. Love in Contemporary British Drama reflects the appeal of love as a topic and driving force in dramatic works with in-depth analyses of eight pivotal plays from the past three decades.
Following an interdisciplinary and historical approach, the study collects and condenses theories of love from philosophy and sociology to derive persisting discourses and to examine their reoccurrence and transformation in contemporary plays. Special emphasis is put on narratives of love's compensatory function and precariousness and on how modifications of these narratives epitomise the peculiarities of emotional life in the social and cultural context of the present.
Based on the assumption that drama is especially inclined to draw on shared narratives for representations of love, the book demonstrates that love is both a window to remnants of the past in the present and a proper subject matter for drama in times in which the suitability of the dramatic form has been questioned.

Contents Acknowledgements 1 Introduction Part I. The Making of Romantic/Erotic Love: Traditions and Transformations 2 Philosophy of Love: Selections 3 Romantic Love in Sociology Part II. Analysis: Love in Contemporary British Drama 4 “Why isn’t love enough?” Commitment in Patrick Marber’s Closer 5 “if you’re not with me I feel less like a person”: Sex, Drugs, and the Myth of Self-Sufficiency in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking 6 Autopsies of Love: Sarah Kane’s Erotic Plays 7 “Not saying I don’t want things though”: Emotional and Material Desires in Dennis Kelly’s Love and Money 8 “Love at first sight and the lost city of Atlantis”: Penelope Skinner’s Eigengrau, Or ‘A Fairy Tale of Blind Love’ 9 “We don’t need ties”: Rebellious Love in Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love 10 “this poetical ... shit”: Coming to Terms with Love in debbie tucker green’s a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (‐noun) 11 Coda Works Cited Index of subjects Index of authors The book series CDE Studies invites monographs (and collections) on issues in contemporary Anglophone dramatic literature and theatre performance. The book series is dedicated to the analysis and renegotiation of contemporary writers and plays and their historical, political, formal, theoretical and methodological contexts