Thornton Wilder: Why Here? Why Now?

Abstract This article explores the relevance and vitality of Wilder’s works to contemporary audiences of 2011. It establishes four criteria—breadth, depth, heat, and light—by which to judge serious literature and states that we should “be impressed by how many points [Wilder] scores.” Wilder, it maintains, embodied Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Man Thinking,” and fused this quality with his own identities as a moralist, showman-shaman, and modernist; these four personae allowed Wilder to react in writing and art to over six decades of human struggle and to set those struggles against the backdrop of previous writers striving to make sense of humanity’s place in our complicated world. Following DeGrazia’s article are fifteen responses that take DeGrazia’s arguments as a springboard for their own reflections on the relevance and immediacy of Thornton Wilder in 2023 and beyond.