Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 10
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2012
Print publication year:
2012
Online ISBN:
9781139058469

Book description

Michael S. D. Hooper reverses the recent trend of regarding Tennessee Williams as fundamentally a social writer following the discovery, publication and/or performance of plays from both ends of his career - the 'proletarian' apprentice years of Candles to the Sun and Not About Nightingales and the once overlooked final period of, amongst many other plays, The Red Devil Battery Sign. Hooper contends that recent criticism has exaggerated the political engagement and egalitarian credentials of a writer whose characters and situations revert to a reactionary politics of the individual dominated by the negotiation of sexual power. Directly, or more often indirectly, Williams' writing expresses social disaffection before glamorising the outcast and shelving thoughts of political change. Through detailed analysis of canonical texts the book sheds new light on Williams' work, as well as on the cultural and social life of mid-twentieth-century America.

Reviews

"This book forced this reviewer to rethink his vision of Tennessee Williams: Hooper gives scholars much to ponder about desire, sexuality, and political agency in Williams's plays.

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Bibliography

Primary texts

Williams, Tennessee,American Blues (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948)
Williams, TennesseeBaby Doll and Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968)
Williams, TennesseeCandles to the Sun, ed. Dan Isaac (New York: New Directions, 2004)
Williams, TennesseeCat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; repr. 1985)
Williams, TennesseeThe Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams, ed. Nicholas Moschovakis and David Roessel (New York: New Directions, 2002)
Williams, TennesseeCollected Stories (New York: New Directions, 1994)
Williams, TennesseeDragon Country: A Book of Plays (New York: New Directions, 1970)
Williams, TennesseeFugitive Kind, ed. Allean Hale (New York: New Directions, 2001)
Williams, Tennessee ‘His Father’s House’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 7 (2005), 5–13
Williams, TennesseeA House Not Meant to Stand, ed. Thomas Keith (New York: New Directions, 2008)
Williams, TennesseeMemoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1972; repr. 1975)
Williams, TennesseeMister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays, ed. Nicholas Moschovakis and David Roessel (New York: New Directions, 2005)
Williams, TennesseeMoise and the World of Reason (London: Allen, 1976)
Williams, TennesseeNew Selected Essays: Where I Live, ed. John S. Bak (New York: New Directions, 2009)
Williams, TennesseeNot About Nightingales, ed. Allean Hale (London: Methuen, 1998)
Williams, TennesseeThe Notebook of Trigorin, ed. Allean Hale (New York: New Directions, 1997)
Williams, TennesseeNotebooks, ed. Margaret Bradham Thornton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)
Williams, TennesseePeriod of Adjustment & Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982)
Williams, TennesseeThe Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (London: Vintage, 1999)
Williams, TennesseeThe Rose Tattoo & Other Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; repr. 1986)
Williams, TennesseeSacre de Printemps (A One-Act Play), Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 12 (2011), 7–25
Williams, TennesseeSomething Cloudy, Something Clear (London: Methuen, 1996)
Williams, TennesseeSpring Storm, ed. Dan Isaac (New York: New Directions, 1999)
Williams, TennesseeStairs to the Roof, ed. Allean Hale (New York: New Directions, 2000)
Williams, TennesseeStopped Rocking and Other Screenplays (New York: New Directions, 1984)
Williams, TennesseeSweet Bird of Youth, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962; repr. 1985)
Williams, TennesseeThe Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. i (New York: New Directions, 1971)
Williams, TennesseeThe Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. ii (New York: New Directions, 1990)
Williams, TennesseeThe Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. v (New York: New Directions, 1976)
Williams, TennesseeThe Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. vi (New York: New Directions, 1981)
Williams, TennesseeThe Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. viii (New York: New Directions, 2001)
Williams, TennesseeThe Traveling Companion and Other Plays, ed. Annette Saddik (New York: New Directions, 2008)

Manuscripts

Williams, Tennessee, ‘Desire and the Black Masseur’, The Tennessee Williams Collection, box 12, folder 3, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Williams, Tennessee, ‘Hard Candy’, The Tennessee Williams Collection, box 18, folder 5, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Williams, Tennessee ‘One Arm’, The Tennessee Williams Collection, box 31, folder 13, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin
Williams, Tennessee ‘We Are Dissenters Now’, The Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection, MSS 562, item 626, The Williams Research Center, New Orleans

Letters and biographical material

Devlin, Albert J. and Tischler, Nancy M., eds., The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. i: 1920–1945 (London: Oberon, 2001)
Devlin, Albert J. and Tischler, Nancy M., eds., The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, vol. ii: 1945–1957 (New York: New Directions, 2004)
Leverich, Lyle, Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (New York: Norton, 1995)
Spoto, Donald, The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (Boston: Da Capo, 1997)
Williams, Dakin and Mead, Shepherd, Tennessee Williams: An Intimate Biography (New York: Arbor House, 1983)
Williams, Edwina Dakin, Remember Me to Tom (New York: Putnams Sons, 1963)
Windham, Donald, ed., Tennessee Williams’s Letters to Donald Windham, 1940–1965 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996)

Critical/contextual material

Adler, Thomas, ‘Culture, Power, and the (En)gendering of Community: Tennessee Williams and Politics’, Mississippi Quarterly, 48 (1995), 649–65
Badenes, José I., ‘The Dramatization of Desire: Tennessee Williams and Federico García Lorca’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 10 (2009), 81–90
Bak, John S., ‘A Streetcar Named Dies Irae: Tennessee Williams and the Semiotics of Rape’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 10 (2009), 41–72
Balakian, Jan, ‘Camino Real: Williams’s Allegory About the Fifties’, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudané (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 67–94
Bigsby, C. W. E., A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, vol. ii: Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee (Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Bigsby, C. W. E., Modern American Drama, 1945–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Boxill, Roger, Tennessee Williams (London: Macmillan, 1987)
Bray, Robert, ‘Vieux Carré: Transferring “A Story of Mood”’, The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams, ed. Philip C. Kolin (New York: Lang, 2002), pp. 142–54
Bryer, Jackson R. and Barks, Cathy W., eds., Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (London: Bloomsbury, 2002)
Clapp, Susannah, The Observer, Theatre Record, 18.5 (26 February–11 March 1998), 249–58
Clum, John M., Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)
Clum, John M. ‘The Sacrificial Stud and the Fugitive Female in Suddenly Last Summer, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth’, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudané (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 128–46
Clum, John M. ‘“Something Cloudy, Something Clear”: Homophobic Discourse in Tennessee Williams’, Modern Critical Interpretations: Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, ed. Harold Bloom (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002), pp. 29–43
Corber, Robert J., Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1997)
Crandell, George W., ‘Misrepresentation and Miscegenation: Reading the Racialized Discourse of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Modern Drama, 40 (1997), 337–46
D’Emilio, John, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)
Devlin, Albert J., ed., Conversations with Tennessee Williams (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986)
Devlin, Albert and others, ‘Afterwords: A Panel Discussion’, Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams, ed. Ralph F. Voss (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), pp. 215–40
Dorff, Linda, ‘“All very [not] Pirandello”: Radical Theatrics in the Evolution of Vieux Carré’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 3 (2000), 1–23
Dorff, Linda, ‘Babylon Now: Tennessee Williams’s Apocalypses’, Theater, 29.3 (1999), 115–19
Elam, Jr, Harry J., ‘Theatre of the Gut: Tennessee Williams and Suzan-Lori Parks’, The Influence of Tennessee Williams: Essays on Fifteen American Playwrights, ed. Philip C. Kolin (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008), pp. 200–15
Embrey, Glenn, ‘The Subterranean World of The Night of the Iguana’, Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), pp. 325–40
Falk, Signi Lenea, Tennessee Williams (New York: Twayne, 1962)
Falocco, Joe, ‘Gardens of Desire: Towards a Unified Vision of Garden District’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 7 (2005), 63–9
Fleche, Anne, Mimetic Disillusion: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and U.S. Dramatic Realism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997)
Foucault, Michel, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, vol. i (London: Penguin, 1998)
Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971)
García, Mario T., ‘La Frontera: The Border as Symbol and Reality in Mexican-American Thought’, Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David G. Gutiérrez (Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1996), pp. 89–117
Gates, Jr, Henry Louis, ed., “Race, ” Writing, and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
Gianakaris, C. J., ‘Tennessee Williams and Not About Nightingales: The Path Not Taken’, American Drama, 9 (Fall 1999), 69–91
Goodheart, Eugene, Desire and its Discontents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)
Griffin, Alice, Understanding Tennessee Williams (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995)
Gross, Robert F., ‘The Gnostic Politics of The Red Devil Battery Sign’, The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams, ed. Philip C. Kolin (New York: Lang, 2002), pp. 125–41
Gross, Robert F., ‘Tracing Lines of Flight in Summer and Smoke and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore’, Tennessee Williams: A Casebook, ed. Robert F. Gross (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 91–105
Hale, Allean, ‘Early Williams: The Making of a Playwright’, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudané (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 11–28
Hale, Allean, ‘Not About Nightingales: Tennessee Williams as Social Activist’, Modern Drama, 42 (Fall 1999), 346–58
Hale, AlleanTom Williams, Proletarian Playwright’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 1 (1998), 13–22
Hare, David, Obedience, Struggle & Revolt (London: Faber and Faber, 2005)
Hays, Peter L., ‘Tennessee Outs Scott and Ernest’, The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writers in Western Literature, ed. Paul Franssen and Ton Hoenselaars (Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999), pp. 253–63
Hellman, Lillian, The Children’s Hour (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1981)
Herron, Ima Honaker, The Small Town in Modern American Drama (Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1969)
Himelstein, Morgan Y., Drama Was a Weapon: The Left-Wing Theatre in New York, 1929–1941 (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1963; repr. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976)
Hooper, Michael S. D., ‘Warring Desires: Sex, Marriage, and the Returning Soldier’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 10 (2009), 31–9
Jones, Robert Emmet, ‘Tennessee Williams’ Early Heroines’, Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), pp. 545–57
Kataria, Gulshan Rai, The Faces of Eve: A Study of Tennessee Williams’s Heroines (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1992)
Kleinberg, S. J., ‘Women in the Twentieth Century’, The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture, ed. Christopher Bigsby (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 194–214
Kolin, Philip C., ‘Civil Rights and the Black Presence in Baby Doll’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 24 (1996), 2–11
Kolin, Philip C., ‘Compañero Tenn: The Hispanic Presence in the Plays of Tennessee Williams’, Tennesssee Williams Annual Review, 2 (1999), 35–52
Kolin, Philip C.The Existential Nightmare in Tennessee Williams’s The Chalky White Substance’, Notes on Contemporary Literature, 23.1 (1993), 8–11
Kolin, Philip C.Sleeping with Caliban: The Politics of Race in Tennessee Williams’s Kingdom of Earth’, Studies in American Drama 1945–Present, 8.2 (1993), 140–62
Kolin, Philip C.Something Cloudy, Something Clear: Tennessee Williams’s Postmodern Memory Play’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 12 (Spring 1998), 35–55
Kolin, Philip C.Tennessee Williams’ “Big Black: A Mississippi Idyll” and Race Relations, 1932’, RE Arts and Letters: Liberal Arts Forum, 20.2 (1995), 8–12
Kolin, Philip C.Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (Cambridge University Press, 2000; repr. 2001)
Kolin, Philip C.ed., The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004)
Kullman, Colby, ‘Rule by Power: “Big Daddyism” in the World of Tennessee Williams’s Plays’, Mississippi Quarterly, 48 (1995), 667–76
Lawrence, D. H., ‘Tickets, Please’, Modern Short Stories, ed. Jim Hunter (London: Faber and Faber, 1964; repr. 1990)
Leyland, Winston, ed., Gay Sunshine Interviews, vol. i (San Francisco, California: Gay Sunshine Press, 1978)
McGlinn, Jeanne M., ‘Tennessee Williams’ Women: Illusion and Reality, Sexuality and Love’, Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), pp. 510–24
Maddison, Stephen, Fags, Hags and Queer Sisters: Gender Dissent and Heterosocial Bonds in Gay Culture (London: Macmillan, 2000)
Meeker, Martin, ‘Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 10.1 (Jan. 2001), 78–116
Meyerowitz, Joanne Jay, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)
Miller, Arthur, Plays Five: The Last Yankee, The Ride Down Mount Morgan, Almost Everybody Wins (London: Methuen, 1995)
Miller, Arthur, Timebends: A Life (London: Methuen, 1988)
Millett, Kate, Sexual Politics (London: Sphere Books, 1972)
Murphy, Brenda, Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Nelson, Benjamin, Tennessee Williams: His Life and Work (London: Owen, 1961)
O’Connor, Jacqueline, Dramatizing Dementia: Madness in the Plays of Tennessee Williams (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997)
Odets, Clifford, Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1982; repr. 1987)
Paller, Michael,‘The Day on Which a Woman Dies: The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore and Nō Theatre’, The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams, ed. Philip C. Kolin (New York: Lang, 2002), pp. 25–39
Paller, Michael,Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality and Mid-Twentieth-Century Drama (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
Palmer, R. Barton and Bray, William Robert, Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009)
Parker, Brian, ‘Multiple Endings for The Rose Tattoo (1951)’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 2 (1999), 53–68
Parker, Brian, et al., ‘The Early Plays of Tennessee Williams’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 7 (2005), 105–27
Parks, Suzan-Lori, ‘An Equation for Black People Onstage’, The America Play and Other Works (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995)
Plimpton, George, ed., Playwrights at Work: The Paris Review (London: The Harvill Press, 2000)
Reck, Tom S., ‘The Short Stories of Tennessee Williams: Nucleus for his Drama’, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 16 (1971), 141–54
Robinson, Marc, The Other American Drama (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Saddik, Annette J., ‘Recovering “Moral and Sexual Chaos” in Tennessee Williams’s Clothes for a Summer Hotel’, abstract for Tennessee Williams Scholars’ Conference, 2009
Saddik, Annette J., ‘The (Un)Represented Fragmentation of the Body in Tennessee William’s “Desire and the Black Masseur” and Suddenly Last Summer, Modern Drama, 41.3 (Fall 1998), 347–54
Savran, David, Communists, Cowboys, and Queers: The Politics of Masculinity in the Work of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992)
Schiavi, Michael, ‘The Hungry Women of Tennessee Williams’s Fiction’, Tennessee Williams: A Casebook, ed. Robert F. Gross (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 107–20
Schickel, Richard, Elia Kazan: A Biography (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006)
Schlatter, James, ‘Red Devil Battery Sign: An Approach to a Mytho-Political Theatre’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 1 (1998), 93–101
Seidel, Kathryn Lee, The Southern Belle in the American Novel (Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1985)
Shackleford, Dean, ‘The Truth That Must Be Told: Gay Subjectivity, Homophobia, and the Social History in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 1 (1998), 103–18
Sinfield, Alan, Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theatre in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)
Sklepowich, Edward A., ‘In Pursuit of the Lyric Quarry: The Image of the Homosexual in Tennessee Williams’s Prose Fiction’, Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), pp. 525–44
Summers, Claude J., Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall: Studies in a Male Homosexual Literary Tradition (New York: Continuum, 1990)
Timpane, John, ‘“Weak and Divided People”: Tennessee Williams and the Written Woman’, Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama, ed. June Schlueter (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989), pp. 171–80
Tischler, Nancy, ‘A Gallery of Witches’, Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, ed. Jac Tharpe (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1977), pp. 494–509
Tischler, Nancy, Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan (New York: Citadel Press, 1961)
Tischler, NancyTennessee Williams: Vagabond Poet’, Tennessee Williams Annual Review, 1 (1998), 73–9
Van Duyvenbode, Rachel, ‘Darkness Made Visible: Miscegenation, Masquerade, and the Signified Racial Other in Tennessee Williams’ Baby Doll and A Streetcar Named Desire, Journal of American Studies, 35 (August 2001), 203–15
Vlasopolos, Ana, ‘Authorizing History: Victimization in A Streetcar Named Desire’, Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama, ed. June Schlueter (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989), pp. 149–70
Wertheim, Albert, ‘Dorothy’s Friend in Kansas: The Gay Inflections of William Inge’, Staging Desire: Queer Readings of American Theater History, ed. Kim Marra and Robert A. Schanke (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 194–217
Young, Jeff, Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films (New York: Newmarket Press, 1999)

Website material

Hale, Allean and others, http://tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/panels/index.php?id=2007 (accessed 4 August 2009)

Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.