Conclusion: Beyond Hegemony and Canonicity

TL;DRAbstract

The primary problem of American drama seems to be located in the convergence of its two components, as if the union of “American” and “drama” were a coupling of the worst elements of both, carrying with it only the tainted characteristics and none of the approved qualities. In the hierarchized categories of genre, drama, too closely aligned with entertainment and with emotion, has been affixed in the cement shoes of high critical disdain and sunk to the murky bottom of academe; as well, in the longstanding competition between teachers and scholars of English and American literatures for control of the discipline, American is the lesser force. The fact that the most canonized figure in the discipline of English literary studies, Shakespeare, was primarily a dramatist does nothing to mitigate the sin of drama. But to accept this double damnation would be to arrive at a worrying conclusion: that the problem of American drama is the problem of cultural capital and that American drama has n

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