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The "soft People" in Tennessee Williams Plays by Maritta Schwartz Pdf
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.
A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams by Stephen Bottoms,Philip Kolin,Michael Hooper Pdf
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.
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions--Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work in Fugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays.
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr Pdf
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category National Book Award Finalist 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' USA Today: 10 Books We Loved Reading Washington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014 The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker. John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.
Born out of the journals the playwright kept at the time, Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carré is not emotion recollected in tranquility, 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 it form from the shifting scenes of memory, and Williams's surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the various inhabitants or his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux Carré: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a properly brought-up young woman from New York making at 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, and 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. Building on two decades of Williams scholarship since Vieux Carré was originally published, Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, has provided a new introduction for this edition, giving the most authoritative account yet of its background and genesis.
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams by Matthew C. Roudané Pdf
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.
The “Soft People” of Laura and Tom Wingfield in 'The Glass Menagerie' and Blanche DuBois in 'A Streetcar named Desire' by Toni Friedrich Pdf
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.
The plays of Tennessee Williams are some of the greatest triumphs of the American theatre. If Williams is not the most important American playwright, he surely is one of the two or three most celebrated, rivaled only by Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. In a career that spanned almost five decades, he created an extensive canon of more than 70 plays. His contributions to the American theatre are inestimable and revolutionary. The Glass Menagerie (1945) introduced poetic realism to the American stage; A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) explored sexual and psychological issues that had never before been portrayed in American culture; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) dared to challenge the political and sexual mores of the Eisenhower era; and his plays of the 1970s are among the most innovative works produced on the American stage. But Williams was far more than a gifted and prolific playwright. He created two collections of poetry, two novels, four collections of stories, memoirs, and scores of essays. Because of his towering presence in American drama, Williams has attracted the attention of some of the most insightful scholars and critics of the twentieth century. The 1990s in particular ushered in a renaissance of Williams research, including a definitive biography, a descriptive bibliography, and numerous books and scholarly articles. This reference book synthesizes the vast body of research on Tennessee Williams and offers a performance history of his works. Under the guidance of one of the leading authorities on Williams, expert contributors have written chapters on each of Williams' works or clusters of works. Each chapter includes a discussion of the biographical context of a work or group of writings; a survey of the bibliographic history; an analysis of major critical approaches, which looks at themes, characters, symbols, and plots; a consideration of the major critical problems posed by the work; an overview of chief productions and film and television versions; a concluding interpretation; and a bibliography of secondary sources. The volume concludes with a selected, general bibliography and a comprehensive index.
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.
A/AS Level English Literature A for AQA Student Book by Russell Carey,Anne Fairhall,Tom Rank Pdf
Created specifically for the AQA A/AS level English literature A specification for first teaching from 2015, this print student book is suitable for all abilities, providing stretch opportunities for the more able and additional scaffolding for those who need it. Helping bridge the gap between GCSE and A level, the unique three-part structure focuses on texts within a particular time period and supports students in interpreting texts and reflecting on how writers make meaning.
The Soft People of Laura and Tom Wingfield in 'the Glass Menagerie' and Blanche Dubois in 'a Streetcar Named Desire' by Toni Friedrich Pdf
Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Martin Luther University, language: English, comment: 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." 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?, 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 t
Like an alchemist, Tennessee would dip his pen in reality and make fiction out of it. This journey through his life focuses on the influence of specific people and places on selected works.
