The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams

by Edited by Matthew C. Roudané

• ISBN13: 9780521498838
• ISBN10: 052149883X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading Williams scholars. This wide-ranging volume covers Williams' works, from the early apprenticeship years through to his last play before his death in 1983. In addition to essays on the major plays, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams also features a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

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.