Thornton wilder interesting facts
Thornton Wilder Biography
Born: April 17,
Madison, Wisconsin
Died: December 7,
Hamden, Connecticut
American playwright and novelist
Novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder won two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, written in and respectively.
His most well-known novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, also won him a Pulitzer Prize in
Childhood
Thornton Niven Wilder was born on April 17, , in Madison, Wisconsin, the second son of four children of Amos Parker and Isabella Wilder. In the family moved to China when his father became the United States Consul-General in Hong Kong.
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Thornton Niven Wilder was a novelist and a playwright of American origin. He was a prolific writer of his age and wrote successfully. He received praise for his writings in the form of awards and won Pulitzer Prizes among others.The teenager attended the English China Inland Mission School at Cheefoo but returned with his mother and siblings to California in because of the unstable political conditions in China at the time. While in high school, Wilder became interested in theater and began regularly attending performances of plays. He also began to demonstrate his unique talents for writing.
Graduating in from Berkeley High School, Wilder attended Oberlin College before transferring to Yale University in He served with the First Coast Artillery in Rhode Island in during World War I (&#x;18), when Germany waged war against much of Europe. After the war he returned to his studies at Yale. In he received his bachelor&#x;s degree and saw the first publication of his play The Trumpet Shall Sound in Yale Literary Magazine.
Writing professionally
Wilder started his novel The Cabala at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, in In New Jersey he taught at the Lawrenceville School while earning a master&#x;s degree at Princeton University. He received his degree in , the publication year of The Cabala. Its publication came at the same time as the first professional production of The Trumpet Shall Sound by the American Laboratory Theater.
But it was his breakthrough work, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (), that thrust him to the forefront of American literature.
A lifelong traveler, Wilder later taught at the University of Chicago, in Illinois, (&#x;) and the University of Hawaii (). He volunteered in World War II (&#x;45; the war fought between the Axis: Italy, Germany, and Japan&#x;and the Allies: France, England, the Soviet Union, and the United States).
During the war he served in Africa, Italy, and the United States. A lecturer at Harvard in the early s, he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters in In he retired to Arizona for almost two years, then renewed his travels. Wilder was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in and the National Book Committee&#x;s National Medal for Literature (first time presented) in
Career as a playwright
Wilder&#x;s first successful dramatic work, which he started at Oberlin, was The Angel That Troubled the Waters ().
A four-act play, The Trumpet Shall Sound (&#x;20), was produced unsuccessfully off-Broadway in The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays in One-Act, published in , contained three plays that gained popularity with amateur groups: The Long Christmas Dinner, Pullman Car Hiawatha, and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.
This last series marked Wilder&#x;s trademark use of a bare stage for the actors.
Thornton wilder brief biography examples Thornton Wilder (born April 17, , Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.—died December 7, , Hamden, Connecticut) was an American writer whose innovative novels and plays reflect his views of the universal truths in human nature. He is probably best known for his plays.Wilder&#x;s first Broadway shows were translations: André Obey&#x;s Lucrece () and A Doll&#x;s House () by Henrik Ibsen (&#x;). His dramatic reputation soared with Our Town (). Written for a bare stage, guided throughout by a narrator, his script examines a small town for the &#x;something way down deep that&#x;s eternal about every human being.&#x;
Wilder&#x;s dramatic work that followed, The Merchant of Yonkers, failed initially in But when produced with slight changes as The Matchmaker in , it proved a fascinating farce, or a show made ridiculous for effect.
(It later re-emerged as the musical play Hello, Dolly! in , then an overwhelming success.) Wilder mingled style and forms even more daringly in The Skin of Our Teeth. Here, Wilder described the human race as flawed but worth preserving. A complex and difficult play that drew from James Joyce&#x;s (&#x;) Finnegans Wake, it became the work that claimed him his final Pulitzer Prize in
The essentially conservative (having to do with the commonly accepted) thematic material staged in radical styles made Wilder&#x;s plays unique.
His later work included an unsuccessful tragedy, A Life in the Sun (or The Alcestiad, ) and three short plays of an
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.Career as a novelist
Wilder established his reputation as a novelist with The Cabala, a minor work that showed Wilder&#x;s moral (having to do with wrong or right) concerns. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, set in eighteenth-century Peru, proved immensely popular and led to the Pulitzer Prize in The Woman of Andros (), based on Terence&#x;s (c.
&#x; B.C.E. ) play Andria was not well received.
See full list on literarydevices.net Thornton Niven Wilder, a celebrated American figure, is known for his simple and traditional writing style. He incorporates literary devices and techniques like symbolism, imagery, exaggeration, paradox, irony, and sound devices to make his work captivating and meaningful.Although Wilder&#x;s view of life encouraged heavy criticism (negative judgment), Heaven&#x;s My Destination (), set in the American Midwest, grew in favor over the years. In The Ides of March () Wilder tried a novel approach to Julius Caesar (&#x;44 B.C.E. ). The Eighth Day in returned Wilder to a twentieth-century American setting that examined the lives of two families.
Wilder&#x;s last novel, Theophilus North, was published in
In line with Wilder&#x;s diverse interests and scholarly (having to do with learned knowledge) bent, Wilder lectured and published extensively.
His Harvard lectures &#x;Toward an American Language,&#x; &#x;The American Loneliness,&#x; and &#x;Emily Dickinson&#x; appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (). His topics addressed play writing, fiction, and the role of the artist in society. His range spanned from the works of the ancient Greeks to modern dramatists (writers of plays), particularly Joyce and Gertrude Stein (&#x;).
His observations and letters were published in a variety of works, from André Maurois&#x;s (&#x;) A Private Universe () to Donald Gallup&#x;s The Flowers of Friendship (). Wilder died of a heart attack December 7, , in Hamden, Connecticut.
See full list on literarydevices.net Thornton Niven Wilder's Our Town is a major work in the canon of American theater. Translated and produced throughout the world, it has been called a poetic chronicle of life and death.For More Information
Bloom, Harold, ed. Thornton Wilder. Philadelphia: Chelsea House,
Bryer, Jackson R. Conversations with Thornton Wilder. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,
Castronovo, David.
See full list on literarydevices.net: Thornton Wilder (born April 17, , Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.—died December 7, , Hamden, Connecticut) was an American writer whose innovative novels and plays reflect his views of the universal truths in human nature. He is probably best known for his plays.
Thornton Wilder. New York: Ungar,
Harrison, Gilbert A. The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder. New Haven, CT: Ticknor &#x; Fields,