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318 REVIEWS replicate "another theme common to American drama": the "sins of the father are visited upon the family" (41). Bogumil refers to a number of secondary sources such as Francis Davis's The History of the Blues, Ronald Takaki's A Different Mirror, Kim Pereira's August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey, Amiri Baraka's Blues People , and Daniel M. Johnson and Rex R. Campbell's Black Migration in America . In this way she adds texture to the close readings of the plays, each of which is analyzed by focusing on African American social and hislorical backgrounds. In discussing Ma Rainey's Black BO llom, Bogumil inserts etymological information concerning the word "juke," tracing its origins to the Bambara language in West Africa and to the Gullah of the Georgia Sea Islands. Intertextual relationships are drawn between Joe Turner's Come and Gone and the poetry of Langslon Hughes, especially "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Afro-American Fragment," in which the "African continuum," evident in Wilson's play, is also expressed (54). Useful in the discussion ofJoe Turner's Come and Gone is the well-known but necessarily repeated reference to the causes of black migration, such as the 1896 Supreme Court decision P/essy v. Ferguson. By 1969, the setting of Two Trains Running, there had been a significant increase in black urban populations in the North, contributing to the economic dilemmas presented in the play. FurthelTIlore, we are reminded in Bogumil's discussion of The Piano Lesson that Wilson employs the "metaphor of a train" in various plays, as in Two Trains Running, the tille of which, borrowed from Muddy Waters's "Still a Fool," refleclS Wilson's connection to the blues. Bogumil clearly recognizes the relationship between social history and the themes of Wilson's plays. In Seven Guitars, Wilson uses the 1946 Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight at Madison Square Garden to give a "visual portrait of a black man's struggle to be empowered" (133). The critical heritage of August Wilson is well served by both Herrington and 'Bogumil. Their publications raise questions concerning the future of Wilson criticism - whether studies will continue to explore the "process of playwriting " - and about Wilson 's excavation of African American cultural and racial issues: a deep mine of materials. JOS EPH MCLA REN, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY, HEMPST EAD, NY DANIELA BINI. Pirandello and His Muse: The Plays For Marta Abba. Gainesville : University Press of Florida 1998. Pp. 230, illustrated. $49.95. This is an inspiring and challenging book for scholars of both Italian and European theatre, as it focuses on the "late plays" written by the 1934 Nobel Reviews 3[9 Prize Winner for Literature, Luigi Pirandello. In fact, most Pirandello scholarship has centred on his earlier plays (with perhaps one exception, The Mountain Giants): Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, Each in his Own Way, and Right You Are! (IfYou Think So), all written before he became director at the Teatro d'Arte in 1925. Pirandello's three-year experience as capocomico would have a great impact on his drama. His plays, from [925 onwards, show traits of his "handson " experience with the stage, and the exercise would urge him to return to some of his earlier theatrical creations and make numerous and substantial changes to them. During his tenure at the Teatro d'Arte Pirandello directed and produced over forty different plays, both in Italy and abroad, that would later influence his own work. Along with many of his own works, he staged plays written by some of the most significant dramatists of his time: Benjamin Cremieux (Here One Dances), Nikolai Eivrenov (The Merry Death and What Really Matters), Authur Schnitzler (The Girlfriend), Henrik Ibsen (The Lady from the Sea and Hedda Gabler) Yaeger Schmidt (The French Doll), and Lord Dunsany (The Mountain Gods). In [925, he hired Marta Abba, a young actress, as prima attrice of his theatre company. This encounter would prove to be crucial, as it also brought about profound changes to his playwriting. According to Bini, Pirandello would, inspired by Marta Abba, abandon his celebrated male protagonist "raisonneur" and replace him with woman. This substitution would result...

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