Author: David Savran
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9781452902395
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description

Author: Michael P. Bibler
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813929849
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Finally breaking through heterosexual clichés of flirtatious belles and cavaliers, sinister black rapists and lusty "Jezebels," Cotton’s Queer Relations exposes the queer dynamics embedded in myths of the southern plantation. Focusing on works by Ernest J. Gaines, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, William Styron, and Arna Bontemps, Michael P. Bibler shows how each one uses figures of same-sex intimacy to suggest a more progressive alternative to the pervasive inequalities tied historically and symbolically to the South’s most iconic institution. Bibler looks specifically at relationships between white men of the planter class, between plantation mistresses and black maids, and between black men, arguing that while the texts portray the plantation as a rigid hierarchy of differences, these queer relations privilege a notion of sexual sameness that joins the individuals as equals in a system where equality is rare indeed. Bibler reveals how these models of queer egalitarianism attempt to reconcile the plantation’s regional legacies with national debates about equality and democracy, particularly during the eras of the New Deal, World War II, and the civil rights movement. Cotton’s Queer Relations charts bold new territory in southern studies and queer studies alike, bringing together history and cultural theory to offer innovative readings of classic southern texts. A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org.

Author: Alisa Solomon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134728948
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Re-Dressing the Canon examines the relationship between gender and performance in a series of essays which combine the critique of specific live performances with an astute theoretical analysis. Alisa Solomon discusses both canonical texts and contemporary productions in a lively jargon-free style. Among the dramatic texts considered are those of Aristophanes, Ibsen, Yiddish theatre, Mabou Mines, Deborah Warner, Shakespeare, Brecht, Split Britches, Ridiculous Theatre, and Tony Kushner. Bringing to bear theories of 'gender performativity' upon theatrical events, the author explores: * the 'double disguise' of cross-dressed boy-actresses * how gender relates to genre (particularly in Ibsens' realism) * how canonical theatre represented gender in ways which maintain traditional images of masculinity and femininity.

Author: Alan Sinfield
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300081022
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.

Author: Stephen Marino
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350310107
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Arthur Miller was one of the most important American playwrights and political and cultural figures of the 20th century. Both Death of a Salesman and The Crucible stand out as his major works: the former is always in performance somewhere in the world and the latter is Miller's most produced play. As major modern American dramas, they are the subject of a huge amount of criticism which can be daunting for students approaching the plays for the first time. This Reader's Guide introduces the major critical debates surrounding the plays and discusses their unique production histories, initial theatre reviews and later adaptations. The main trends of critical inquiry and scholars who have purported them are examined, as are the views of Miller himself, a prolific self-critic.

Author: Jacqueline O’Connor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611478944
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Gender and cultural studies readings of Tennessee Williams’s work have provided diverse perspectives on his complex representations of sexuality, whether of himself as an openly gay man, or of his characters, many of whom narrate or dramatize sexual attitudes or behavior that cross heteronormative boundaries of the mid-century period. Several of these studies have positioned Williams and his work amid the public tensions in American life over roughly four decades, from 1940–1980, as notions of equality and freedom of choice challenged prejudice and repression in law and in society. To date, however, neither Williams’s homosexuality nor his persistent representations of sexual transgressions have been examined as legal matters that challenged the rule of law. Directed by legal history and informed by multiple strands of Williams’s studies criticism, textual, and cultural, this book explores the interplay of select topics defined and debated in law’s texts with those same topics in Williams’s personal and imaginative texts. By tracing the obscure and the transparent representations of homosexuality, specifically, and diverse sexualities more generally, through selected stories and plays, the book charts the intersections between Williams’s literature and the laws that governed the period. His imaginative works, backlit by his personal documents and historical and legal records from the period, underscore his preoccupation with depictions of diverse sexualities throughout his career. His use of legal language and its varied effects on his texts demonstrate his work’s multiple and complex intersection with major twentieth-century concerns, including significant legal and cultural dialogues about identity formation, intimacy, privacy, and difference.

Author: Robert J. Corber
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822319641
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, this book examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet.

Author: Sam V. H. Reese
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807165778
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The Short Story in Midcentury America provides in-depth case studies of four major writers of the post–World War II era—Paul Bowles, Mary McCarthy, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams—examining how they used the contained aesthetics of short fiction to map out an oppositional stance to the dominant narratives, both political and literary, of mid-twentieth century U.S. culture. Sam V. H. Reese presents a new understanding of the connections between politics, ideology, and literary form, arguing that writers employed the short story to critique the cultural mores of the early Cold War. The four authors under discussion found themselves socially marginalized by mainstream U.S. culture due to such factors as their gender, sexual orientation, religion, and foreign residence. Reese shows that each author embraced the short story’s compressed form as a means of resisting political coercion and conformity, speaking out in support of freedom and open expression. Reese argues that these four writers used the formal restrictions of the short story to develop a type of fiction that became recognizably countercultural, challenging the expansive, sprawling novels then receiving acclaim from critics. His analysis underscores the means by which each author’s short stories utilized the aesthetic practices of mediums outside conventional narrative fiction: Bowles’s career as a composer, McCarthy’s criticism and memoirs, Williams’s playwriting, and Welty’s photography. By studying both their prose and its conceptualization, Reese reveals how writers resisted the political and stylistic pressures that defined U.S. literary culture in the early years of the Cold War. In The Short Story in Midcentury America, Reese establishes a new framework for considering countercultural literature in the United States, reassessing the critical standing of the short story and re-evaluating the relationship between marginal social positions and literary form during the mid-twentieth century.

Author: Alan Sinfield
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512820539
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
Was Shakespeare gay? Is The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitic? How does mainstream reading differ from that of subcultural groups? In this lively and readable book, Alan Sinfield challenges the assumptions of English literature and investigates the principles and practices that may inform lesbian and gay reading.

Author: Marvin A. Carlson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501726889
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
Beginning with Aristotle and the Greeks and ending with semiotics and post-structuralism, Theories of the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey of Western dramatic theory. In this expanded edition the author has updated the book and added a new concluding chapter that focuses on theoretical developments since 1980, emphasizing the impact of feminist theory.