| This dissertation is a search for a viable Marxist hermeneutic. This hermeneutic provides a level of access to the silent ideological inscriptions of external determinants and interior contradictions---heretofore masked in the text by various formal and generic devices. This hermeneutic was then applied to selected works of Clifford Odets and Arthur Miller. The result is a collection of "symptomatic" readings of six plays, filtered through the contributions of such theorists as Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Fredric Jameson and John Prow. Their contributions changed our ways of thinking about the ties between context and text. By accessing their contributions, this dissertation initiates a more sophisticated framework for examining American drama. |
