Modern Theater from Aesthetic Perspectives: Negation, Aesthetic Truth, and Temporal Dialectics in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

Abstract

Modern aesthetics is fascinated by the quality of empirical expressions in art, where the most unattainable forms of experiences seek refuge to survive through temporal dialectics. Whereas modern art endeavors to transcend its inherent experience of suffering through negating the sociopolitical reality of the imposed suppressive pain, Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory associates itself with the study of a non‐discursive form of experience that refers to the transient nature of a multilayered truth, compromising a self‐reflexive and subjectively temporal essence, to which all aesthetic questions terminate. Correspondingly, the current paper aims at approaching Eugene O’Neill’s mental theater from a new perspective, acknowledging the significance of temporal dialectics in modern aesthetics. Accordingly, the current research studies Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night based on the elements of temporal dialectics and aesthetic negation, confirming the significance of these elements in detecting the ultimate aesthetic truth in the works of literature.