John Osborne (redirected from Osborne, John (James))

Osborne, John 

Born Dec. 12, 1929, in London. British playwright.

Osborne was initially an actor. He began writing in the late 1940’s, collaborating with A. Creighton on The Devil Inside (1949) and other works. The premiere of Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger in 1956 (Russian translation, 1959) is considered the beginning of the literary movement of the “angry young men.” In the play, Osborne depicts postwar British youth, who reject traditional bourgeois values with bitterness and contempt but see no goals worth struggling for. In his subsequent plays (The Entertainer, 1957; Inadmissible Evidence, 1964; West of Suez, 1969; A Sense of Detachment, 1973), Osborne portrays with cutting irony and emotion the crisis of contemporary British intelligentsia and scathingly criticizes the sociopolitical system and social mores of Great Britain.

Osborne’s plays combine elements of naturalism with features reminiscent of B. Brecht; farcical devices are also used along with psychological characterization. The character of Martin Luther in Osborne’s historical tragedy Luther (1961) is also presented as an “angry young man.”

WORKS

The World of Paul Slickey. London, 1959.
Plays for England. London, 1963.
A Patriot for Me. London, 1965.
In Russian translation:
“Nepodsudnoe delo.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1967, no. 7.

REFERENCES

Palievskii, P. “Odinokie medvedi.” Inostrannaia literatura, 1958, no. 2.
Shestakov, D. Sovremennaia angliiskaia drama. Moscow, 1968.
Trussler, S. The Plays of John Osborne. London, 1969. (Bibliography.)
Carter, A. John Osborne. Edinburgh, 1969. (Bibliography.)

I. M. LEVIDOVA