"The fountainhead of all of modern drama," Thornton Wilder called August Strindberg. Strindberg moved from a naturalistic mode of drama (The Father and Miss Julie) through a religious and psychological crisis (Inferno) that turned Strindberg into the first theatrical expressionist (The Ghost Sonata and A Dream Play). his personality has been described as an "abstract and brief chronicle" of his times, and this course examines the plays in the context of the cultural climate from 1870 to 1910.