Sexual Politics in the Work of Tennessee Williams (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781107533004)

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 glamorizing 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.

Author: Michael S. D. Hooper
ISBN-10: 1107533007
ISBN-13: 9781107533004
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 08/06/2015
Pages: 260
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.55d