A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) are major plays by Tennessee Williams, one of America's most significant dramatists. They both received landmark productions and are widely-studied and performed around the world. The plays have also inspired popular screen adaptations and have generated a body of important and lasting scholarship. In this indispensable Reader's Guide, Thomas P. Adler: - Charts the development of the criticism surrounding both works, from the mid-twentieth century through to the present day - Provides a readable assessment of the key debates and issues - Examines a range of theoretical approaches from biographical and New Criticism to feminist and queer theory In so doing, Adler helps us to appreciate why these plays continue to fascinate readers, theatregoers and directors alike.

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.

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.

While the 1950s have been popularly portrayed-on television and in the movies and literature-as a conformist and conservative age, the decade is better understood as a revolutionary time for politics, economy, mass media, and family life. Magazines, films, newspapers, and television of the day scrutinized every aspect of this changing society, paying special attention to the lifestyles of the middle-class men and their families who were moving to the suburbs newly springing up outside American cities. Much of this attention focused on issues of masculinity, both to enforce accepted ideas and to understand serious departures from the norm. Neither a period of "male crisis" nor yet a time of free experimentation, the decade was marked by contradiction and a wide spectrum of role models. This was, in short, the age of Tennessee Williams as well as John Wayne. In Men in the Middle, James Gilbert uncovers a fascinating and extensive body of literature that confronts the problems and possibilities of expressing masculinity in the 1950s. Drawing on the biographies of men who explored manhood either in their writings or in their public personas, Gilbert examines the stories of several of the most important figures of the day-revivalist Billy Graham, playwright Tennessee Williams, sociologist David Riesman, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, Playboy literary editor Auguste Comte Spectorsky, and TV-sitcom dad Ozzie Nelson-and allows us to see beyond the inherited stereotypes of the time. Each of these stories, in Gilbert's hands, adds crucial dimensions to our understanding of masculinity the 1950s. No longer will this era be seen solely in terms of the conformist man in the gray flannel suit or the Marlboro Man.

Unlock the more straightforward side of A Streetcar Named Desire with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, which tells the story of two very different sisters, Blanche and Stella, who are forced to live together after Blanche loses both her job and the family home. However, the genteel, highly strung Blanche soon clashes with Stella’s boorish husband Stanley, and their volatile relationship hastens her impending mental and emotional collapse. A Streetcar Named Desire won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is one of Tennessee Williams’ most celebrated plays. Williams’s other works include The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly Last Summer, and he is widely considered to be one of the greatest American playwrights of all time. Find out everything you need to know about A Streetcar Named Desire in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater reappraises the received wisdom that Williams’s work fell into decline in the late 1960 as the Naturalism he was associated with, not always through his own choice, was replaced by European theatrical experimentalism and as culture saw a lifting of sexual restrictions. It suggests, instead, that Williams was always experimental, always more Chekhov than Ibsen, a lyrical playwright inflected with the poetry of Harte Crane, and that his late plays are as central to Williams’s reshaping of American theater as those works of the immediate post–World War II era that brought him fame and fortune. Its general aim, then, is to engage the perception that “Tennessee Williams is the greatest unknown playwright America has produced” (David Savran, City University of New York). In many respects the work of Tennessee Williams, after a protracted period of neglect, is primed for reappraisal , reinterpretations and, subsequently, re-stagings. This work is part of that process, academically at very least, but performatively as well as academic reinterest often regenerates theatrical reinterest.

Enable students to achieve their best grade in AS/A-level English Literature with this year-round course companion; designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise A Streetcar Named Desire throughout the course. This Study and Revise guide: - Increases students' knowledge of A Streetcar Named Desire as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced teachers and examiners - Develops understanding of characterisation, themes, form, structure and language, equipping students with a rich bank of textual examples to enhance their coursework and exam responses - Builds critical and analytical skills through challenging, thought-provoking questions and tasks that encourage students to form their own personal responses to the text - Extends learning and prepares students for higher-level study by introducing critical viewpoints, comparative references to other literary works and suggestions for independent research - Helps students maximise their exam potential using clear explanations of the Assessment Objectives, sample student answers and examiner insights - Improves students' extended writing techniques through targeted advice on planning and structuring a successful essay

Diploma Thesis from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: B (2), University of Vienna (Institute for Anglistics/American Studies), language: English, abstract: Tennessee Williams is one of America's greatest playwrights whose talents of creating tension and atmosphere went beyond the métier of theatre and were convincing in the field of motion pictures, too. Elia Kazan, the successful theatre and film director, particularly admired the artist’s gift of evoking emotions. In this thesis, however, I shall not attempt at evaluating Williams’s total works. Rather, my object is a comparative analysis of select plays by Tennessee Williams and of their film adaptations: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947, 1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955, 1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959, 1962). Special attention has been given to examining the social differences in the plays and films. By focussing on the methods of characterisation employed I shall investigate more or less typical class representations in the two different media. I shall work out the social politics of the playwright, theatre and film directors, and – as far as possible – the actors’ and actresses’ contributions to the dramatic contents. The multitude of interpretations and variations usually gives proof to the value of artistic works. The methods applied in this thesis are literary research and film studies. As a matter of course, I analysed the plays on their written basis, which raises the general question to what extent the perceptions by the audience and the reader differ. ‘The readers of a play must use their imagination to flesh out the characters, and to place them in an appropriate setting’ (Sambrook, 6). Williams gives very precise and evocative stage directions, which help the reader to imagine the situations in many details. Meaning is often conveyed by poetic images. By employing figurative language he tries to ‘paint a word picture or convey in words the quality of a sound’ (Sambrook, 48). The critic also notes that in Streetcar, these stage directions contrast and ‘serve to underline the uneducated speech’ (Sambrook, 14) of most characters, except for the DuBois sisters. The audience of a play or film, on the other hand, cannot perceive these aspects; rather, the spectators are confronted with a particular setting and with concrete actors and actresses. ...

Presents a collection of ten critical essays on Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire" arranged in chronological order of publication.

Offers advice on writing essays about the works of Tennessee Williams and lists sample topics.