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Chapter 27 - Uneasy Lie the Heads That Wear the Crowns

Constructing a Spiritual Center in The Emperor Jones and King Hedley II

from Part IV - Critical and Comparative Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

By
Donald P. Gagnon
Edited by
Khalid Y. Long  and
Isaiah Matthew Wooden
Khalid Y. Long
Affiliation:
Howard University, Washington DC
Isaiah Matthew Wooden
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
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Summary

Acknowledging that August Wilson has often claimed Eugene O’Neill as one of the primary influences for his dramatic art, this chapter consider how his King Hedley II might be read to deconstruct O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones and reconstruct, in contrast, a world in which Wilson’s protagonist develops a functional spiritual center lacking in O’Neill’s, thereby redeeming, through an African American lens, the problematic racial work of the ostensibly progressive O’Neill.

Keywords

August WilsonAmerican Century CycleEugene O’NeillKing Hedley IIThe Emperor JonesPaul Carter Harrison

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Type
Chapter
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August Wilson in Context , pp. 330 - 343
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Bloom, Steven F., “The Lingering (Comic?) Legacy of Eugene O’Neill,” The Eugene O’Neill Review 20, nos. 1 and 2 (1996): 139–46.Google Scholar
Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006).Google Scholar
Maufort, Marc, Labyrinth of Hybridities: Avatars of O’Neillian Realism in Multi-Ethnic American Drama (1972–2003) (New York: P. I. E. Peter Lang, 2010).Google Scholar
Palmer, David, ed., Visions of Tragedy in Modern American Drama (New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018).Google Scholar
Plum, Jay, “Blues, History, and the Dramaturgy of August Wilson,” African American Review 27, no. 4 (1993): 561–567. https://doi.org/10.2307/3041888.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, Sandra G., The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

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