Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder ( born April 17, 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin, † December 7, 1975 in Hamden, Connecticut) was an American writer.

• 3.1 bibliographies
• 3.2 General literature on Wilder
• 3.3 Comparative studies

Life

Wilder was born in 1897 in Madison in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. He was the son of a U.S. diplomat and therefore spent part of his childhood in China. He began to write plays, as he attended the Thacher School student was where he did not fit right, so that he was teased by his classmates than intellectual. One of his classmates later said of him: " We left him alone, quite simply alone. He then retired to the library, his hideaway, back and learned to stay away from humiliation and indifference. "

During the First World War, he served three months in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps, an artillery unit of the U.S. Coast Guard in Fort Adams ( Newport, Rhode Iceland ). He reached the rank of corporal. After he graduated from Oberlin College 1916-1917. At Yale University, he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1920. From 1920 to 1921 he attended the American Academy in Rome. His master he made in French. In 1926 his first novel, The Cabala published. Commercially successful and well known was Wilder in 1927 with the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, who also in 1928 the first Pulitzer Prize won him. Between 1930 and 1937 he taught at the University of Chicago.

His second Pulitzer Prize in 1938 for the piece Wilder 's Our Town, a later filmed and still played like three-act play, set in the fictional small town of Grover 's Corners, New Hampshire. Our Town is the best known example for Wilders particular dramatic technique, which uses a narrator, the so -called " game manager " who (also Teichoskopie, Greek Teichoskopia ) assumes a certain extent the role of the ancient choir or the Mauerschau and by a minimum equipment stage tries to emphasize the universality of human experience.

The third Pulitzer Prize Wilder for his play The Skin of Our Teeth. It was premiered in 1943 with Fredric March and Tallulah Bankhead in the lead roles. The issues are similar to those of many other works Wilders: war, pestilence, economic depression, and fire as an existential experience of man. By the boundaries of time and space are ignored, ranging from four characters and three acts to roll up the history of mankind.

During the Second World War, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Air Force Intelligence and served in Africa and then in Italy. In 1945 he retired from the army. Wilder translated plays by André Obey and Jean -Paul Sartre. From 1950 to 1951 he was Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

Wilder was never married. Overall, Wilder wrote seven stories, three major plays, numerous one-act plays and a number of smaller works such as essays, "Three minutes Games " and scientific articles; In 1957 he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Buchhandelsund 1959, the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art. Also in 1959 he received the Goethe Medal of the City of Frankfurt am Main. His last story, Theophilus North, appeared in 1973. Wilder died on December 7, 1975 in Hamden (Connecticut). He is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery.

Works

After the English original titles with year of publication in each case the ( sometimes significantly different) title of German translations are called, if any.

Novels

• The Cabala (1926, The Kabala, German 1929)
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Germany 1929)
• The Woman of Andros (1930, The Woman from Andros, Germany 1931)
• Heaven's My Destination (1935, Heaven I 'm chosen, Germany 1951)
• The Ides of March (1948, The Ides of March, GV 1949)
• The Eighth Day (1967, The Eighth Day of Creation, German 1968)
• Theophilus North (1973, Theophilus North, or a saint in spite of himself, dt 1974)

Plays

• The Trumpet Shall Sound (1926 )
• The Angel That Troubled Waters and Other Plays (1928, three- minute games for three people)
• The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One Act (1931, Queens of France, Germany 1964) This collection includes one-act plays: The Long Christmas Dinner
• Queens of France
• Pullman Car Hiawatha
• Love and How to Cure It
• Search Things Happen Only in Books
• The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden

Complexity is the story of the comedy The Merchant of Yonkers (1938 ): it is based on Nestroy Comedy a joke he wants to do (1842 ), 1954, heavily revised by Wilder, as The Matchmaker was re-released, which in turn as a template for the Musical Hello, Dolly! served.