Recasting Genre in Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays

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Recasting Genre in Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Fall 12-2010 Recasting Genre in Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays Christina Ilona Hunter University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, and the Playwriting Commons Recommended Citation Hunter, Christina Ilona, "Recasting Genre in Tennessee Williams's Apprentice Plays" (2010). Dissertations. 487. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/487 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi RECASTING GENRE IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S APPRENTICE PLAYS by Christina Ilona Hunter Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2010 ABSTRACT RECASTING GENRE IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S APPRENTICE PLAYS by Christina Ilona Hunter December 2010 This dissertation investigates Tennessee Williams’s earliest full-length plays, also known as the apprentice plays—Candles to the Sun , Fugitive Kind , Not About Nightingales , Spring Storm , and Stairs to the Roof —by comparing, contrasting and contextualizing them in relation to Daniel Chandler’s generic criteria of drama; namely, narrative, characterization, setting, topics, iconography, and staging techniques. The present study also draws upon an extensive body of scholarship pertaining to genre theory, Williams’s cultural contemporaries, and the historical and psychological backdrop of Depression-era America. In these early plays, Williams diverged sharply from the dramatic generic conventions of his day, manipulating them in new and unique ways, to create plays that reflect and embody authentic generic innovations. Their immense impact, not only on his own subsequent works but also on other playwrights, is widely acknowledged. While the initial rediscovery of these plays in 1998 led to their widespread appreciation, publication, and/or production, no study to date has analyzed their distinctive generic innovations. This analysis demonstrates how Williams reworks and exploits the contemporary repertoire of dramatic narratives, while situating their generic locales—the coal mine, the prison, the urban gangster milieu, Southern Gothic, and science fiction—within the overarching genres of protest and fantasy. These generic ii conventions often intertwine through both the major and minor narratives of a single play. Separate chapters introduce each play, discussing its specific formal organization and generic attributes, and noting its relation to contemporary dramatic and cinematic traditions. Williams’s reinterpretation and revision of his personal artistic philosophy is examined in light of formal and stylistic concerns bearing on his ingenious handling of a broad mixture of borrowings and innovations, and the following scrutiny of genres always situates the plays’ unconventionality within the cultural and theatrical context in which Williams was active. iii COPYRIGHT BY CHRISTINA ILONA HUNTER 2010 The University of Southern Mississippi RECASTING GENRE IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S APPRENTICE PLAYS by Christina Ilona Hunter A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: _Kenneth V. Watson __________________ Director _Angela S. Ball _______________________ _Sherita L. Johnson ____________________ _Philip C. Kolin ______________________ _Maureen A. Ryan ____________________ _Susan A. Siltanen____________________ Dean of the Graduate School December 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...........................................................................................................................ii INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................vi CHAPTER I. POLITICAL PROTEST AND BEYOND ................................................. 1 Overview of the Protest Genre: Candles to the Sun , Fugitive Kind , and Not About Nightingales Political and Economic Backdrop Literary Reactions to Social Ills of the 1930s Contemporary Relevance of Williams's Protest Plays II. CANDLES TO THE SUN ....................................................................... 22 The Coal Mining Narrative Characterization of the Oppressed Female Terrorism andViolence Sordid Monotony in the Rural Setting Iconography of Darkness Cinematic Influences and Techniques III. FUGITIVE KIND .................................................................................... 61 The Gangster Narrative Transients, Petty Criminals, and Other Deviants Social Disorder and Its Discontents Iconography of the Underworld Squalor in the Urban Setting Cinematic Influences and Techniques IV. NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES........................................................... 112 The Prison Narrative Characters Under Surveillance Social and Political Coercion Iconography of Incarceration The "Stir" as Setting Cinematic Influences and Techniques Historical Background and Provenance of the Script iv V. FANTASY AND BEYOND .................................................................. 198 Overview of the Fantasy Genre: Spring Storm and Stairs to the Roof Cultural and Literary Backdrop Emergence of the Gothic and Science Fiction Motifs Contemporary Relevance of Williams's Fantasy Plays VI. SPRING STORM .................................................................................. 275 The Southern Gothic Narrative Hopelessly Entangled Characters Sex, Suicide, and Southern Society The Morbidity of the Gothic Setting Iconography of the New South Cinematic Influences and Techniques VII. STAIRS TO THE ROOF ....................................................................... 379 The Science Fiction Narrative Characters: Real, Imagined, and Transcendent Disllusion, Despair, and Deliverance The Strangeness of the Fantasy Setting Iconography of the New Science Fiction Cinematic Influences and Techniques VIII. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 460 APPENDIX .................................................................................................................... 473 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 484 v INTRODUCTION Genre Theory and Tennessee Williams’s Apprentice Plays Between 1935 and 1940, while he was still a student, Tennessee Williams wrote his first cycle of five full-length plays. Critics have characterized these early plays in various ways. According to Gerald Weales (1965), they are “the lost plays”; for Philip Kolin (“Review of Spring Storm ,” 2000), they are “the forgotten plays”; for Brian Parker (2006), “the rediscovered plays”; and for Robert Bray (2005), the “apprentice plays,” a term which will be applied for the purposes of this dissertation. Until 1998, none had been published and only one, Stairs to the Roof , had been professionally produced (in 1945). This dissertation will examine these apprentice plays, exploring the ways in which they significantly transformed many of the traditional theatrical genres that Williams had inherited but had dismissed as “exhausted” ( GM 131). 1 While Williams perceived this legacy as outmoded and bankrupt, it enabled him, nonetheless, to create radically new genres of dramatic art to express more fully his unique personal, social, and political concerns (Holditch 217). Moreover, playing fast and loose with the narrative conventions available to him, Williams also often invoked minor forms, such as farce, tragicomedy, and slapstick—themselves transgressions against then-dominant theatrical modes—by way of reinvigorating the major forms of comedy and tragedy. While some scholars—notably Jacqueline O’Connor ( Moving 19) and Annette J. Saddik ( Blueprints 67)—have recognized the importance of genre in Williams’s full- 1 The Glass Menagerie has been published in Williams, Theater of Tennessee Williams. I have used the short-form title GM throughout this dissertation. vi length apprentice plays, only the dissertations of Elizabeth Hardaway and Nabeel Yaseen have applied genre theory as a broad analytical framework for interpreting Williams’s works; neither of these makes reference to the five apprentice plays. Thus, given the limited academic attention that has been accorded to the selected plays, this dissertation has the potential to make a significant contribution to the existing critical literature. Interestingly, it is Williams’s unique reconfigurations of genres—his simultaneous “critique and embrace” of existing dramatic norms (Saddik, Blueprints 69)—that have brought him recent recognition as a “herald of the postmodern mentality” (70). By contrast, American dramatists who had either preceded Williams or were his contemporaries had generally been content to comply with existing dramatic conventions. They incorporated mainstream generic criteria while eschewing any tendency toward the kind of brutal reflections that characterize much of Williams’s
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