Tennessee Williams

Philip C. Kolin

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

New Critical Essays

Othello

The first full-length study to assess Shakespearean performances on southern stages, ranging from colonial to contemporary times & showing the plentiful evidence throughout the history of the American South that Shakespearean plays have been among the favorites to be performed with success on southern stages.

Essays on Performance

Shakespeare in the South

"In this anthology of poems, 80 gifted contributors from Baltimore to Bucharest reacquaint us with the luminous, numinous moon-and what a delightful meeting it is! As I sit listening to Holst's The Planets, feasting my eyes on this printed panorama of moonstruck mindscapes, the irony of this strange Black Moon month when our astral partner hides from our view is impressed upon me as I write, and I am reminded how much I miss her. Sue Walker and Philip Kolin have skillfully brought this collection together, giving readers welcome respite from the burdens of the earthly mundane. Whether profoundly thoughtful or playfully humorous, each poem lodges itself cozily within the reader. No one should deny themselves the pleasures of this lunar mosaic." -Michael A. Flannery "Let me tell the honest-to-moon truth. This collection makes me feel kin to everybody-Stuart, Maria, William, Lou Ella, Robert, Karen, Joseph, Marley, Peter, Linda-and on: everyone inside and outside its radius. After all, haven't we all shared the moon? Hasn't it accompanied us all, through everything? My own favorite has been the gibbous moon, the curve of its back resembling an ape; a shape I can feel not-too-distantly related to-way out there. This is a collection that brings us all closer together-a magical anthology." -Sena Jeter Naslund "This anthology is a striking poetic counterpart of the moon's nocturnal magic. Projecting upward their questioning, their awe, fantasy, and visions, word-magicians display here their sleight-of-hand with the light and shadow of substance and form. Although free association is often the poetic engine and form varies-from prose poems and free verse to villanelles, even a pantoum-these poems, like the orb they celebrate, also honor cosmic order and the need for order in the restless human mind." -Catharine Savage Brosman "The Night's Magician is a fascinating collection of poems that sparkle with imagination and shared love for the orb we all know and love. These poets raise the bar as they focus on the moon with a shared reverence and awe. They make our hearts beat faster and truer with the beams of their poetry. Sue Walker and Philip Kolin have crafted a truly beautiful anthology in which poem after poem folds itself around the ever familiar, intimate presence of the moon." -William Ferris "This brilliant collection is a demonstration of the universality of the poet's gaze at the moon. Along with the human heart, the moon is perhaps the most suited for consideration by the poet-a pool and a mirror, our closest yet unreachable neighbor. Sharing their visions with us the poets in The Night's Magician demonstrate the universality of the moon, our shared neighbor and mirror to us all." -Carlos Dews "If you are old enough to remember 1953, Dean Martin crooning When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore, you will fall in love all over again when your eyes feast on poems in The Night's Magician. Some poems explore the moon's relation to earth and create hymns to our life on this planet. Other lush poems look closely at the natural world and the moon's physical cycles to see how they each reflect an individual life. Several poets depict its gravitational pull that produces ocean tide, body tide and the slight lengthening of the day. Others delve into the moon's mysterious indifference, what it coolly withholds, a puzzle that can't be solved, that prompts dogs to bay their hearts out. All in all, The Night's Magician provides a torch that the heart can follow through the darkness." -Vivian Shipley

The Night's Magician: Poems about the Moon

Critics and apparently audiences would prefer to believe that American playwright Williams (1911-83) wrote nothing again after his 1961 Night of the Iguana. English scholars take another look at the many plays he wrote during his last two decades, many of which have never been published and languish in manuscripts strictly guarded by relatives. The 15 original essays are not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams

The Undiscovered Country

'The impressive array of scholars gathered in this collection, all experts in the field, read the plays with nuance and situate them deftly within their cultural and historical contexts. Scholars of contemporary theater and drama and of African American literature will find value in this engaging collection.' – Choice 'For students and scholars of American theatre and drama generally and African American theatre and drama most particularly, this is an extremely valuable critical source.' – Harry Elam, Stanford University, USA In the last fifty years, American and World theatre has been challenged and enriched by the rise to prominence of numerous female African American dramatists. Contemporary African American Women Playwrights is the first critical volume to explore the contexts and influences of these writers, and their exploration of black history and identity through a wealth of diverse, courageous and visionary dramas. Kolin compiles a wealth of new essays, comprising: Yale scholar David Krasner on the dramatic legacy of Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston, Marita Bonner and Georgia Douglas Johnson individual chapters devoted to: Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Adrienne Kennedy, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, Aishah Rahman, Glenda Dickerson, Anna Deavere Smith and Suzan Lori-Parks an essay and accompanying interview with Lynn Nottage comprehensive discussion of attendant theatrical forms, from choreopoems and surrealistic plays, to documentary theatre and civil rights dramas, and their use in challenging racial and gender hierarchies. Contributors: Brandi Wilkins Catanese, Soyica Diggs, James Fisher, Freda Scott Giles, Joan Wylie Hall, Philip C. Kolin, David Krasner, Sandra G. Shannon, Debby Thompson, Beth Turner and Jacqueline Wood.

A Casebook

Contemporary African American Women Playwrights

Packed with real-world examples, SUCCESSFUL WRITING AT WORK: CONCISE, 4e delivers a practical yet succinct introduction to effective workplace writing for a variety of communication tasks. Based on the market-leading SUCCESSFUL WRITING AT WORK, 10e, the CONCISE edition covers the most essential skills for effective workplace communication. The text begins with writing basics, emphasizing the characteristics of effective writing, the writing process, ethics, and the importance of audience. It covers basic business correspondence, walks students through formatting letters for a variety of business situations, and features a step-by-step chapter on getting a job. More advanced chapters focus on document design and visuals, writing instructions and procedures, writing reports, proposals, and making business presentations. The Fourth Edition emphasizes ethical considerations throughout as well as integrates guidelines for greening the workplace. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Successful Writing at Work: Concise Edition

SUCCESSFUL WRITING AT WORK, 11th Edition, features an abundance of real-world examples and problems, an accessible writing style, and detailed guidelines for planning, drafting, revising, editing, formatting, and producing professional documents and graphics in the global workplace. Students are presented with topics in four logically sequenced sections, beginning with a discussion of the writing process and collaboration, followed by material on basic business communications (including e-communications and social media), letters, and resumes; conducting research and documenting sources; and more advanced tasks such as preparing visuals, websites, instructions, procedures, proposals, short and long reports, and presentations. With each new writing assignment, students learn to become effective problem solvers, to work effectively as members of a collaborative team, to understand their global audience, and to select the best communication technologies to accomplish their goals. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Successful Writing at Work

This is a study of the state of research on and history of performances of 40 American playwrights, including major mainstream, ethnic, and regional playwrights. The essays list their published and unpublished plays, as well as their other works; document the performances; identify bibliographies, biographies, critical studies, and analyses of the plays; and discuss the critical reception. The volume deals with production histories, covering critics, actors, directors, and theater companies that have contributed as much to theater as the playwrights themselves. It also discusses original screenplays and identifies writing on younger playwrights on whom research has just begun. ISBN 0-313-25543-1: $66.00 (For use only in the library).

A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism, and Performance

American Playwrights Since 1945

This is the first collection of critical essays devoted exclusively to Shakespeare's first published work, his long narrative poem Venus and Adonis which established his reputation as the literary darling of London and the heir of Ovid. Particularly important is the book's coverage of the little-known presence of Venus and Adonis on stage.A substantial introduction of 65 pagessurveys the history of criticism about the poem and its significance, and addresses such issues as the burdens of readership and the poem as a staged production. Following are 19 reprinted works from the 18th to late 20th centuries and seven original essays by leading scholars that examine the poem from a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives-Lacanian desire, semiotics and Elizabethan wardship, female readership, mythology, aesthetics and art history. An extensive chronological bibliography of scholarship, editions, and theatrical and literary reviews makes this volume indispensable.

Critical Essays

Venus and Adonis

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 is surely one of two or three of the most celebrated, rivaled only by Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. But in a career that spanned almost five decades, he also produced two collections of poetry, two novels, four collections of stories, and scores of essays. This reference book offers a thorough review of the vast body of research on his works, along with a history of performance. The volume contains chapters devoted to particular works or clusters of works, and each is written by an expert contributor. Each chapter includes a discussion of the biographical context of the work or group of works; a survey of the bibliographic history; a summary of major critical approaches, which looks at themes, characters, symbols, and plots; a consideration of the major critical problems posed by the work; a review of chief productions and film and television versions; a concluding overview; and a bibliography of secondary sources.

A Guide to Research and Performance

Fifteen distinguished scholars contribute original essays that analyze A Streetcar Named Desire from various critical or cultural stances, methods, or modalities. Represented are the theories of Lacan and Foucault and the tenets of Marxism; the approaches of Feminism, Reader Response Criticism, Deconstructionism, Chaos and Anti-Chaos Theory, Translation Theory, Formalism, Mythology, Perception Theory, and Gender Theory; and the perceptions of Popular Culture, Film History and Theory, Southern Letters, and assorted cultural and regional studies. Viewing the play through multifaceted lenses, the essayists open up the script and expand our awareness of the problems and possibility offered by this great modern classic.

Essays in Critical Pluralism

Confronting Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire

Robert S. Miola

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Comedy of Errors

Covering feminist and gender criticism of Shakespeare's plays and poems from 1975 through 1988, 439 citations, often mini-essays, cover not just feminist studies based on feminist theory but also works dealing with Shakespeare's women, questions of gender, androgyny, and role playing, and Shakespeare's own views of women and his culture's responses to them. Works critical of feminists are included to show how their arguments and methods have influenced contemporary views. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An Annotated Bibliography and Commentary

Shakespeare and Feminist Criticism

A continuous history of the play, Streetcar named desire in production from 1947 to 1998, with emphasis on the Broadway premiere.

Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire

"The author of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof drew on personal and family drama for material. Essays examine how Williams's confessional style influenced Inge, Mamet, Kushner, Lori-Parks and others. There is a special study of African-

Essays on Fifteen American Playwrights

The Influence of Tennessee Williams

Originally published in 1995. In three parts – introduction, criticism and reviews – this volume examines the goriest of Shakespeare’s works. The editor’s exhaustive introduction runs through the pattern of changing scholarship and commentary, introducing the key interests in the play, from its authorship to its language, rhetoric and performance. Early commentaries focused on arguing about whether the play was truly Shakespeare’s. A selection of the most important of these are included here followed by later investigations looking at myriad topics and characters – revenge, violence, race, Aaron, women, tragedy and Tamora. The large section of reviews of stage performances, arranged chronologically, ranges from 1857 to 1990. Two final pieces interestingly survey stage history of Titus in Japan and in Germany.

Philip C. Kolin

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