The Undiscovered Country

Williams' later canon -- post Night of the Iguana -- has not received the intensive critical attention his earlier works have. The fifteen original essays in this book, written by leading authorities on Tennessee Williams, examine the energy and variety of Williams' late work in light of critical theory and performance objectives to reveal a powerful and rarely gifted experimental artist at work. Rather than seeing the works of the 1960s-1980s as a falling off of Williams' talent, the essays here demonstrate and argue that they are vital to the Williams canon and to American (and world) theatre alike. Contents: Philip C. Kolin: Introduction -- Annette J. Saddik: « The Inexpressible Regret of All Her Regrets: Tennessee Williams's Later Plays as Artaudian Theatre of Cruelty -- Michael Paller: The Day on Which a Woman Dies: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore and No Theatre -- Allean Hale: The Gnadiges Fraulein: Tennessee Williams's Clown Show -- Una Chaudhuri: « AWK!: Extremity, Animality, and the Aesthetic of Awkwardness in Tennessee Williams's The Gnadiges Fraulein -- Gene D. Phillips, S.J.: Tennessee Williams's Forgotten Film: The Last of the Mobile Hot-Shots as a Screen Version of The Seven Descents of Myrtle -- Terri Smith Ruckel: Ut Pictura Poesis, Ut Poesis Pictura: The Painterly Texture of Tennessee Williams's In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel -- Felicia Hardison Londre: The Two-Character Out Cry and Break Out -- Philip C. Kolin: « having lost the ability to say: 'My God!': The Theology of Tennessee Williams's Small Craft Warnings -- Robert F. Gross: The Gnostic Politics of The Red Devil Battery Sign -- Robert Bray: Vieux Carre: Transferring « A Story ofMood -- Verna Foster: Waiting for Buddy, or Just Going on in A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur -- George W. Crandell: « I Can't Imagine Tomorrow: Tennessee Williams and the Representations of Time in Clothes for a Summer Hotel -- Norma Jenckes: « Let's Face the Music and Dance: Resurgent Romanticism in Tennessee Williams's Camino Real and Clothes for a Summer Hotel -- James Fisher: « In My Leftover Heart: Confessional Autobiography in Tennessee Williams's Something Cloudy, Something Clear -- Thomas Keith: A House Not Meant to Stand -- Tennessee's Haunted Last Laugh. « With this volume of 15 provocative essays on the later plays, Philip Kolin makes another major contribution to the study of Tennessee Williams' work. It will provide a strong foundation on which to build a new understanding of the significance and quality of these undeservedly neglected plays. Employing an extraordinary range of knowledge to inform their analyses -- from the theories of Artaud and Brecht to the aesthetics of N and Postmodernism to the disciplines of theology and philosophy -- these distinguished scholars and critics have written readable and enlightening essays that will undoubtedly serve as an incentive to future study and criticism. (Brenda Murphy, Professor of English, University of Connecticut) « Philip Kolin's 'The Undiscovered Country' is an important and unique addition to Tennessee Williams scholarship. These fifteen essays invite readers to reconsider the value of the later works of Williams, and do so in fresh, original ways. This collection provides an engaging corrective to the neglect and discredit that have long haunted the last two decades of Williams' career.(Matthew Roudane, Professor of English and Chair, Georgia State University)