The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading scholars in the field. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors cover a healthy sampling of Williams's works, from the early apprenticeship years in the 1930s through to his last play before his death in 1983, Something Cloudy, Something Clear. In addition to essays on such major plays as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, among others, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Companion also features a chapter on selected key productions as well as a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.
- Provides an accessible look at Tennessee Williams and his work and life
- Tennessee Williams currently in vogue with recent filmisations of A Streetcar Named Desire (1995) starring Alec Baldwin, Jessica Lange and John Goodman and Suddenly Last Summer (1993) starring Maggie Smith, Rob Lowe, Richard E. Grant, and Natasha Richardson
- All essays newly commissioned for this Companion
- A fresh look at a major twentieth-century dramatist
- Offers a chronology and bibliographical essay on key research
Reviews & endorsements
"...this essential collection.... Strongly recommended for all public and academic libraries, for Williams fans as well as Williams scholars." Choice
"The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams introduces readers to a contemporary and original critical overview of Williams's canon in an engaging and incisive manner. The fourteen essays contextualize the Williams canon through a judicious blend of biographical and historical detail and through a comprehensive examination of a literary and theatrical career that spanned nearly five decades. The strength of this companion lies in its incisively broad social provenance, in the cogent and compelling authority of its readings, and in its ability to accomodate a detailed historical perspective from a decidedly contemporary vantage point. All of the contributions offer precise, detailed, and accurate assessments of a canon that retains and expands its power to challenge responses to its impact. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams will undoubtedly be a necessary work for students and seasoned scholars alike." Christina Hunter, South Atlantic Review
"Makes significant strides in the direction of opening up the work of an essential medieval philospher to non-specialists. More than that, for its clearer contributions, it also holds open the possibility of reinvigorating the excitement and interest the expert." Medieval Review
Product details
January 1998Paperback
9780521498838
304 pages
227 × 153 × 18 mm
0.49kg
5 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations and acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction Matthew C. Roudané
- 1. Early Williams: the making of a playwright Allean Hale
- 2. Entering The Glass Menagerie C. W. E. Bigsby
- 3. A streetcar running fifty years Felicia Hardison Londré
- 4. Camino Real: Williams's allegory about the fifties Jan Balakian
- 5. Writing in 'A Place of Stone': Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Albert J. Devlin
- 6. Before the fall - and after: Summer and Smoke and The Night of the Iguana Thomas P. Adler
- 7. The sacrificial stud and the fugitive female in Suddenly Last Summer, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth John M. Clum
- 8. Romantic textures in Tennessee Williams's plays and short stories Nancy M. Tischler
- 9. Seeking direction Brenda Murphy
- 10. Hollywood in crisis: Tennessee Williams and the evolution of the adult film R. Barton Palmer
- 11. Tennessee Williams: the last two decades Ruby Cohn
- 12. Words on Williams: a bibliographical essay Jacqueline O'Connor
- 13. The Strangest Kind of Romance: Tennessee Williams and his Broadway critics Jacqueline O'Connor
- Index.
