Abstract

Raymond Henry Williams is a British academic, writer and critic from Wales. He taught for years as professor of drama at the University of Cambridge. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in English cultural circles in general. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature constitute an important contribution to Marxist criticism of culture, literature and the arts. His work laid the foundations for the field of cultural studies and the materialistic cultural critical approach. He has books including: Culture and Society, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, Culture and Materialism, Politics and Literature, Modern Tragedy and several literary works. In his book, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (1973), which has been published in successive editions and is truly one of the most important studies in world drama, Raymond Williams examines in a typical critical manner the development of the dramatic form from Ibsen to Brecht with a critical account and revaluation. It provides the reader with deep insights into the role of drama in society and the way the dramatic language works. This constitutes an essential reading for theater-goers, critics and students of literature alike. The seventh chapter of the book, represented by the current chapter translated into Arabic, includes a study on the main plays of the dramatist and poet Brecht with a comprehensive view of his work and the development of his dramaturgy from the beginning of the twenties until the epic theater in 1931. In his remarkable period between 1937-1945, he wrote his famous plays: Mother Courage, The Good Woman of Sezuan, The Life of Galileo, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He founded the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. Williams examines here the development of Brecht's plays and the obscurities and contradictions in the dramatic success. The works of this stage in his career along with his theory of epic theater, dealing with production, performance, acting, and criticism and so on, form the two main interrelated contributions, in which he used his political and left-wing ideas as a prominent theater leftist artist .