The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

Tennessee Williams' characters set the stage for their own dramas. Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), arrived at her sister's apartment with an entire trunk of costumes and props. Amanda Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie) directed her son on how to eat and tries to make her daughter act like a Southern Belle.

This book argues for the persistence of one metatheatrical strategy running throughout Williams' entire oeuvre: each play stages the process through which it came into being--and this process consists of a variation on repetition combined with transformation. Each chapter takes a detailed reading of one play and its variation on repetition and transformation. Specific topics include reproduction in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), mediation in Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981), and how the playwright frequently recycled previous works of art, including his own.

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The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

Tennessee Williams' characters set the stage for their own dramas. Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), arrived at her sister's apartment with an entire trunk of costumes and props. Amanda Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie) directed her son on how to eat and tries to make her daughter act like a Southern Belle.

This book argues for the persistence of one metatheatrical strategy running throughout Williams' entire oeuvre: each play stages the process through which it came into being--and this process consists of a variation on repetition combined with transformation. Each chapter takes a detailed reading of one play and its variation on repetition and transformation. Specific topics include reproduction in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), mediation in Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981), and how the playwright frequently recycled previous works of art, including his own.

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The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

by Laura Michiels
The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams: Tracing the Artistic Process Through Seven Plays

by Laura Michiels

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$39.99 

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Overview

Tennessee Williams' characters set the stage for their own dramas. Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), arrived at her sister's apartment with an entire trunk of costumes and props. Amanda Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie) directed her son on how to eat and tries to make her daughter act like a Southern Belle.

This book argues for the persistence of one metatheatrical strategy running throughout Williams' entire oeuvre: each play stages the process through which it came into being--and this process consists of a variation on repetition combined with transformation. Each chapter takes a detailed reading of one play and its variation on repetition and transformation. Specific topics include reproduction in Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), mediation in Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981), and how the playwright frequently recycled previous works of art, including his own.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781476642581
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date: 07/13/2021
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 261
File size: 4 MB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Laura Michiels is an English lecturer at Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Belgium. Articles and reviews by her have appeared in Arcadia: International Journal of Literary Culture, Amerikastudien, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English and Theatre Journal. Her research currently focuses on contemporary American political theatre.
Laura Michiels is an English lecturer at Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Belgium. Articles and reviews by her have appeared in Arcadia: International Journal of Literary Culture, Amerikastudien, Journal of Contemporary Drama in English and Theatre Journal. Her research currently focuses on contemporary American political theatre.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Abstract
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Mythic Metatheater: Battle of Angels/Orpheus Descending
Mimesis
Grotesque (and) Generic Transformations
2. Multiplying Metatheater: Sweet Bird of Youth
(Pro)creation
Mechanical Reproduction
3. Esoteric Metatheater: Out Cry/The Two-Character Play
Esoteric Endeavors
Transmuting Performance
4. Marauding Metatheater: Clothes for a Summer Hotel
Authors, Businessmen, Celebrities
Primitivists, Exoticists, Imperialists
5. Negotiating Metatheater: Something Cloudy, Something Clear
Quoting Poetry, Translating Music (and Vice Versa)
Mediating Memory
Conclusion
Chapter Notes
Works Cited
Index
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