Synopses & Reviews
One of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century, George Bernard Shaw has a reputation as a humanitarian, a seeker of justice - and, in his own words, 'world betterer.' But this is difficult to reconcile with his enthusiastic support of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, which is usually dismissed as comic exaggeration and hyperbole, pugnacious rhetoric, paradox, or the antagonizing of the British political establishment.
But as Bernard Shaw and Totalitarianism shows, Shaw's support was genuine, rooted in his powerful desire for absolute control over the unruly and chaotic, in a deep psychological longing for perfection. Shaw expressed rigid control over his own bodily instincts, and looked for political rulers of strong will and utopian designs to exercise similar control over unruly social elements.
For fifty years Shaw expressed a desire for state liquidation of recalcitrant or incorrigibly unproductive citizens in the hope of clearing the ground for a 'higher' kind of human creature. While Shaw knew that the public was not ready to act on such controversial ideas, he did hope that by disseminating his ideas through highly entertaining plays and essays they would take root in the mind and be activated later on by the power of the will.
Review
To come
Review
At last Bernard Shaw has been taken out of the 'oddball' category: an eclectic and somewhat baffling mixture of playwright, pundit, paradoxer, and clown. Matthew Yde's engaging and scholarly reappraisal relocates him convincingly within the maelstrom of European artistic and political modernism. As such, Shaw joins the ranks of the true avant-garde, intent on transforming the contemporary no-man's land into a site for the imaginings of large scale experiments in socially engineering a new civilisation (with all too often devastating consequences). 'Shavian' is about to change its meaning. - Roger Griffin, author of
Modernism and Fascism
In this compelling study of Shaw's plays and non-dramatic work Matthew Yde reveals Shaw's consistent and firmly held beliefs in the need for non-democratic, radical, and ruthless change to achieve his vision of a just and equitable society. Yde's unapologetic exposé of Shaw's views is at once a refreshing and provocative re-evaluation of a dominant aspect of Shaw's life and work. - Leonard Conolly, Trent University, Canada
Synopsis
This book reveals the genuity of Shaw's totalitarianism by looking at his material - articles, speeches, letters, etc but is especially concerned with analyzing the utopian desire that runs through so many of Shaw's plays; looking at his political and eugenic utopianism as expressed in his drama and comparing this to his political totalitarianism.
About the Author
Matthew Yde is Lecturer in the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University, USA. Previous publications include articles in Modern Drama and SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies and a contributed chapter in Godly Heretics: Essays on Alternative Christianity in Literature and Popular Culture (2013). Dr. Yde is a recipient of the prestigious Ohio State University Presidential Fellowship.
Table of Contents
Introduction: George Bernard Shaw: Revolutionary Playwright
1. Previsions of the Superman in the Coming Age of Will: The Quintessence of Ibsenism
2. Utopia in Flames: Shaw and Wagner's Ring: The Perfect Wagnerite
3. From Hell to Heaven: Creative Evolution and the Drive towards the Military-Industrial-Religious Complex: Man and Superman, John Bull's Other Island, Major Barbara
4. Shaw's Modern Utopia: Back to Methuselah
5. Shaw's Totalitarian Drama of the Thirties; or, Shaw and the Dictators: Geneva, The Millionairess, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles
6. George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Utopian to the End: Farfetched Fables
EPILOGUE