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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2009
American Culture has almost from its beginnings claimed what may be the Western world's primary Judeo-Christian metaphor — that of the Garden of Eden. The vastness of its wilderness, the newness of its culture, and the plasticity of its identity allowed both its citizens and many outsiders to embrace their vision of America as a manifestation of humanity's earliest boon from its deity. In the 20th and 21st centuries, this metaphor has continued to be called forth at moments when the country's soul was perceived as being tested by the failure of American capitalism in the Depression, the country's tentative stretches toward Empire in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and the Faustian unleashing of the atom at the end of the Second World War.
1. Lee Blessing (b. 1949), a member of Minneapolis's Writer's Project, has had his work produced around the world, including an entire season devoted to his plays at New York's Signature Theatre. He has had productions in London's West End as well as on Broadway, and he has many productions and premieres at the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Yale Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Actors Theatre of Louisville. His drama A Walk in the Woods was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the Tony, and the Olivier Awards for Best Play, and he has received other awards, including the American Theatre Critics Award, the George and Elisabeth Maron Award, and the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Eleemosynary.
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