Download or read book The soft People in Tennessee Williams Plays written by Maritta Schwartz and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-08 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), Ruhr-University of Bochum (English Seminar), course: Hauptseminar: Modern American Drama, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this written paper I am going to deal with the topic of soft people in Tennessee Williams' dramas. First I will give a general introduction to the quality of soft people. It will be explained what kind of characters are described with this term. A general characterization of them, of the other characters and the general idea and image of the world which is created in Williams' dramas will be given. Afterwards the results will be specified at the examples of four characters belonging to the category of soft people. At the end of this paper I will give a personal evaluation of the conception of the soft people.
Download or read book Vieux Carr written by Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born out of the journals the playwright kept at the time, Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carre is not emotion recollected in tranquillity, but emotion re-created with all the pain, compassion, and wry humor of the playwright's own 1938-39 sojourn in the New Orleans French Quarter vividly intact. The drama takes its form from the shifting scenes of memory, and Williams's surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the various inhabitants of his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux Carre: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a properly brought-up young woman from New York making a last grab at pleasure with Tye, the vulgar but appealing strip-joint barker; two decayed gentlewomen politely starving in the garret; and the dying painter Nightingale, who tries to teach the young writer something about love -- both of the body and of the heart. This is a play about the education of the artist, an education in loneliness and despair, in giving and not giving, but most of all in seeing, hearing, feeling, and learning that "writers are shameless spies," who pay dearly for their knowledge and who cannot forget.
Download or read book The Soft People of Laura and Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar named Desire written by Toni Friedrich and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Martin Luther University, language: English, abstract: “I ́ve run for protection .... And so the soft people have got to – shimmer and glow – put a – paper lantern over the light. ... But I ́m scared now – awf`ly [sic] scared.” These lines of self-revelation by Blanche DuBois, the protagonist of A Streetcar Named Desire, go hand in hand with Maggie ́s words of consolation at the end of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: “Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of ....“ Both describe one of the most crucial, if not the most central, elements of Tennessee Williams literary work: the concept of fragility and need for protection within a universe of hostility – the notion of “soft people.” This term paper is intended to elucidate on the topic of “soft people” within Tennessee Williams most important plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. It will try to investigate the following questions: Why did the theme “soft people” gain such prominence within Williams` work? What parallels can be detected between the author ́s life and aspects of his characters? What makes Laura and Tom Wingfield, on the one hand, and Blanche DuBois, on the other hand, belong to this category? What misery do these characters share? What signifies their softness in any individual case, and what determines their fate at the end of the plays? In order to answer these questions, a thorough look into the characters and metaphors of the plays – with help of the plays – will be provided, as well as secondary literature of a wide range of literary scholars consulted. To achieve a high and detailed level of understanding of Tennessee Williams` allusions, tropes and allegories, an examination of the playwright’s personal life will precede the analysis of his “soft people.” Moreover, to attain a profound exploration of the singularity of Tom ́s situation – with respect to him being trapped within a society of mediocrity and sedation – the ideas and postulations of the Frankfurt School, the so called critical theory of industrial society, will be discussed.
Download or read book The Glass Menagerie written by and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Plays of Tennessee Williams written by Tennessee Williams and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Four Plays by Tennessee Williams written by and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the Winter of Cities written by Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1964 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few writers achieve success in more than one genre, and yet if Tennessee Williams had never written a single play he would still be known as a distinguished poet. The excitement, compassion, lyricism, and humor that epitomize his writing for the theater are all present in his poetry. Tennessee Williams's fame as a playwright has unjustly overshadowed his accomplishment in poetry. This paperback edition of In The Winter of Cities-his collected poems to 1962-permits a wider audience to know Williams the poet. The poems in this volume range from songs and short lyrics to personal statements of the greatest intensity and power. They are rich in imagery and illuminated by the psychological intuition which we know so well from Williams's plays.
Download or read book Tennessee Williams Four Plays written by Tennessee Williams and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams written by Stephen Bottoms and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams provides the essential guide to Williams' most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on four of Williams' plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers are wanting a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Williams' artistry. A chronology of the writer's life and work helps to situate all his works in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of Williams' writing, its recurrent themes and concerns and how these are intertwined with his life and times. For each play the author provides a summary of the plot, followed by commentary on: * The context * Themes * Characters * Structure and language * The play in production (both on stage and screen adaptations) Questions for study, and notes on words and phrases in the text are also supplied to aid the reader. The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Williams' work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Williams' greatest plays.
Download or read book The Theatre of Tennessee Williams 27 wagons full of cotton and other short plays written by Tennessee Williams and published by New York : New Directions. This book was released on 1971 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available as a paperbook, Volume VIII adds to the series' four full-length plays written and produced during the last decade of Williams' life.
Download or read book Tennessee Williams Plays 1937 1955 written by Tennessee Williams and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2000-10-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tennessee Williams's explosive, often violent, plays shattered conventional proprieties and transformed the American stage. They inspired some of the most famous productions and performances in theatrical and film history, and they continue to grip audiences all over the world. Now, in an authoritative two-volume edition, The Library of America collects the plays that define Williams's extraordinary range and achievement. This first volume begins with the stunning rediscovered plays of Williams's early career: Spring Storm, a tragedy of provincial longing that prefigures the mood and language of his later work, and Not About Nightingales, a stark prison drama, produced in 1998 to international acclaim, that resounds with the playwright's outraged idealism. With the autobiographical The Glass Menagerie in 1944, Williams attained what he later called "the catastrophe of success," a success made all the greater by A Streetcar Named Desire, his most famous play and one of the most influential works of modern American literature. Forging an idiom that uniquely blended lyricism and brutality, a tragic sense of life and a genius for comic observation, he continued to revolutionize the American theater with a series of masterpieces: the poignant and melancholy Summer and Smoke, the light-hearted erotic comedy The Rose Tattoo, the sprawling and surrealistic Camino Real, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Pulitzer Prize–winning portrayal of a ruthless family struggle. This volume also contains Battle of Angels (an early version of Orpheus Descending), and a selection of Williams's one-act plays, including 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, The Property Is Condemned, and I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, a meditation on the life and work of D. H. Lawrence. This edition includes a newly researched chronology of Tennessee Williams's life, explanatory notes (including cast lists of many of the original productions), and an essay on the texts.
Download or read book Summer and Smoke written by Tennessee Williams and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 1950 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: A play that is profoundly affecting, SUMMER AND SMOKE is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward lif
Download or read book Tennessee Williams written by Tennessee Williams and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 843 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cat on a Hot Tin Roof written by Tennessee Williams and published by Signet. This book was released on 1968-04-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play has captured both stage and film audiences since its debut in 1954. One of his best-loved and most famous plays, it exposes the lies plaguing the family of a wealthy Southern planter of humble origins.
Download or read book 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays written by Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1966-01-17 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen one-act plays collected in this volume include some of Tennessee Williams's finest and most powerful work. They are full of the perception of life as it is, and the passion for life as it ought to be, which have made The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire classics of the American theater. Only one of these plays (The Purification) is written in verse, but in all of them the approach to character is by way of poetic revelation. Whether Williams is writing of derelict roomers in a New Orleans boarding house (The Lady of Larkspur Lotion) or the memories of a venerable traveling salesman (The Last of My Solid Gold Watches) or of delinquent children (This Property is Condemned), his insight into human nature is that of the poet. He can compress the basic meaning of life—its pathos or its tragedy, its bravery or the quality of its love—into one small scene or a few moments of dialogue. Mr. Williams's views on the role of the little theater in American culture are contained in a stimulating essay, "Something wild...," which serves as an introduction to this collection.
Download or read book Eight plays Tennessee Williams written by Tennessee Williams and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Facing the Abyss written by George Hutchinson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythologized as the era of the “good war” and the “Greatest Generation,” the 1940s are frequently understood as a more heroic, uncomplicated time in American history. Yet just below the surface, a sense of dread, alienation, and the haunting specter of radical evil permeated American art and literature. Writers returned home from World War II and gave form to their disorienting experiences of violence and cruelty. They probed the darkness that the war opened up and confronted bigotry, existential guilt, ecological concerns, and fear about the nature and survival of the human race. In Facing the Abyss, George Hutchinson offers readings of individual works and the larger intellectual and cultural scene to reveal the 1940s as a period of profound and influential accomplishment. Facing the Abyss examines the relation of aesthetics to politics, the idea of universalism, and the connections among authors across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions. Modernist and avant-garde styles were absorbed into popular culture as writers and artists turned away from social realism to emphasize the process of artistic creation. Hutchinson explores a range of important writers, from Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy to Richard Wright and James Baldwin. African American and Jewish novelists critiqued racism and anti-Semitism, women writers pushed back on the misogyny unleashed during the war, and authors such as Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams reflected a new openness in the depiction of homosexuality. The decade also witnessed an awakening of American environmental and ecological consciousness. Hutchinson argues that despite the individualized experiences depicted in these works, a common belief in art’s ability to communicate the universal in particulars united the most important works of literature and art during the 1940s. Hutchinson’s capacious view of American literary and cultural history masterfully weaves together a wide range of creative and intellectual expression into a sweeping new narrative of this pivotal decade.
