English Literature

Lawrence is a very prolific writer but his books were uneven in quality

– 15 novels & volumes of short stories. The best of them are:

“The Rainbow”(was also condemned as obscene one)

“Women in Love” 1920

“Kangaroo” 1923

“The Plumed Serpent” 1926

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1929) was subjected to obscenity trial. It

was banned for oscine vocabulary till 1960. “His urgency in seeking out the

deepest core of his characters’ being lead him to employ a language

overfraught with portentous vocabulary – repeatedly, ineffectually

gesturing at dark, mystic, passionate, but ultimately vague & ungraspable

emotions.” Critics considered this work to be his greatest one.

Sexual aspect wasn’t the only one though very important. It was a part

of his concept of personal development.

American Modernism.

It appeared in the first decade of the XX when the group of poets

appeared in the USA who tried to bring modernists’ ideas. The most active

of these poets were Ezra Pound & Thomas Eliot. American modernism doesn’t

mean geographical terms. Many American writers created their works in

Europe (mainly in Paris). Ezra Pound said: “Paris is a lab of ideas”.

Modernists:

Ezra Pound

Gertrude Stein

John Dos Passos

Ernest Hemingway

Partially William Faulkner

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

A famous poet, publicist & translator. He studied in the University of

Pennsylvania (studied Roman languages). But he had a very brief career as a

teacher & in 1908 he left for Europe. He walked all the way from Gibraltar

to Venice where the first collection of his poems appeared – “A Hume

Spento”. During 2 years from 1908 he gained his popularity. His collections

were:

“Canzoni” – songs

“Ripostes” – leisure

“Lustra” – light

The poems impressed the readers by the original form, new expressiveness &

metrical faction. He is the founder of imagist’s school (opposed

traditional Victorian verse). The poets’ aim was to be precise & clear in

word usage. They did not accept thematic limitations, were responsible for

exploding the traditional form, tried to find form to substitute it. There

was a trend in imagism – wordism – the model for the XXth century poetry.

Its features:

V Mechanistism

V Technisism

V Specific rhyme

Much attention was paid to the metaphorical images. These ideas influenced

young poets like Robert Frost, Thomas Eliot, and W. Butler.

Pound edited magazine “Little Review” where new names & works were

introduced. It is believed that he revolutionized English versification. He

tried to capture the intonation of monological speech. His poems have a

peculiar form of masques. His poetry is dressed in the bright clothes of

Latin, Greek, Japanese, Anglo-Saxon, etc poets.

Translations are the best part of his legacy. They were also thoroughly

polished masques. He developed interest Japanese poetry. He liked the

Japanese way of presenting the most abstract idea through a concrete image.

So he introduced idiomatic poetry when any nation could be rendered through

the combination of concrete images. This principle was employed in “The

Cantos” epic poem, which he started in 1925 & continued almost up to the

end of his life. He called it “неисчерпаемый свод стихотворных форм”. The

synthesis of his ideas of works, autobiography, aesthetic & poetic

principles & reflection of the urgent & poetic issues. “The Cantos” are

uneven in quality. Some fragments are difficult to understand. To

facilitate the process of reading “The Index of Cantos” was published. In

1925 Pound moved to Italy & became interested in politics & economics. He

devoted much time & effort to discuss economics & politics.

“The ABC of ECONOMICS”

“What Is Money For?”

He supported the fascist regime. After the war he was arrested & charged in

prison, but was considered to have mental disease & spent 22 years in

mental hospital. In late 50’s he was let free & went to Italy where he

died. But he continued to write even in hospital. “The Cantos of Pizza” is

a very painful reevaluation of the things passed. The famous critic Malison

said: “He chose a wrong position above the society & that’s the problem”.

He was the poet who transformed the form of English verse – thus his

achievement was great.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Gertrude Stein is remembered because of her influence on the writers to

come, not for her works. She doesn’t enter anthologies of English or

American literature. She was born in USA, her childhood was spent in

Europe. She studied psychology in Harvard. Her teacher was William James.

She conducted several experiments on automatic writing but she was

interested only from psychological point of view. However, she did not

become a psychologist yet this influenced her writing. In 1903’s she left

for Paris & remained there almost all her life. In 1909 she published the

novel “The Three Lives”. It consists of three parts describing the lives of

three women. The work was unnoticed in that time. But that time she got

acquainted with famous artists: Picasso, Matisse. New tendencies in

painting (cubism, abstractionism) impressed her very much.

Abstraction tendencies dominated in her artistic works. She claimed that

only Spanish & American writers were able to realize abstract notions in

literature. This abstraction must be expressed by the deformity of the

form. She was the only representative of literary abstractionism. Her

desire was to get rid of the content of words (of the meaning) so that she

could be able to concentrate on the plastic properties of the language &

its syntax. She was going to capture inner & outer reality in the most

precise & objective form.

Literature must not awake any associations: associative emotions are

invalid. Everything that is the result of emotions cannot be the gist of

literary work, cannot be material for prose & poetry. They must consist in

the precise rendering of internal & external reality. The words must

express the reality directly, she tried to devoid them of any meaning. But

she forgot that the painter & the writer use different media for their

arts. But if colours have no meaning the words obviously possess it. She

wanted to create pure literature by using pure words, no one else tried to

do that before. She emptied the words of the thought & created almost her

private language & that was the extreme. It showed how far one could go in

violating the language.

Another novelty – the new concept of time. She tried a new method of

narration – “continuous present”. Instead of the narration she creates a

composition where a story is presented as if happening at the present

moment, not as a consequent unfolding of the theme as we perceive reading.

She did acknowledge that such a category as time in literature would

transform into continuous perception of the present moment. So she tried to

put this theory into practice in her book “The Making of Americans”.

In “The Making of America” describing the history of the Gestland family

she tries at the same time to give a picture of American history. She tried

to describe individual & general simultaneously. And that resulted in the

style, which was very awkward. She also tried to use the technique that she

borrowed from cinematography, like in a film each next shot presents a

slight variation from the previous one. Each next sentence differed from

the previous one only insignificantly (regularly-repeated phrases, key

words). It may look ridiculous, stupid, but many modern writers took this

repetition from her.

Another side the so-called portraits in literature were created on the

basis of rhythmic principle. Every person has his own rhythm & in

portraying a person’s life she tried to combine & match these rhythms –

literary expressionism. The result of this was simplification of syntax,

foregrounding of the verbs, minimal punctuation & omission of nouns &

adjectives. “Tender Buttons” is a collection of poems, examples of this

technique. The reaction was not unanimous. They accused the style for

deintellectualization. For example, Malcolm Kowly said that “reading her

style annoys us…”. Stein’s experiments are not so important by itself

because they warned other artists against taking the same route. Her works

are fruitless & senseless – they distract the communication. But her

experiments are noticeable in Hemingway’s syntax, Faulkner’s “continuous

present” (=past does exist in the present), Sherwood Anderson’s principles

of cinematography. Her significance – she was the first English writer who

expressed those tendencies which were the distinctive features of the avant-

garde movement.

John Doss Passos (1896-1970)

He was born in Chicago. He lived a long life but his most productive

period was in the 20-30’s of the XXth century. He reflected the progressive

ideas of the time, produced the epic of American life within the framework

of a literary experiments. He graduated from Harvard. In 1916-17 studied

architecture in Spain & this background can be felt in his works in their

architecture. Participated in the war & after that he began to write. His

first book – “One Man’s Initiation”(1920). It was the first book in

American literature, which treats the war topic. It is a lost generation

book because it was motivated by post-was disillusionment that young people

experienced. The pathos is clearly antiwar. It is autobiographical. The

pacifist motives are very strong here. The style doesn’t differ much from

that of his mature works. Dos Passos chose the fragmentary way of

organization of material, which is to his mind, more expressive. The book

is in the form of interior monologue – to express more precisely the crash

of a young American world in the war.

He continued the same technique in “Three Soldiers”. He attacks the

corruption of the world, socialist motives become more explicit in his

work. Here he experiments with writing technique – plot. The lives of three

young people – Americans – are in the focus of his attention. At first

their lives are connected, they met each other on the same boat but this is

the only point where their fates are close. As they arrive in Europe their

ways diverge. Each one follows his own path. The plot decenters, follows

the life of each of three heroes. All of them are ruined at the war, feel

lost, disillusioned. It is a typical lost generation novel written in the

modernist technique. John Andrews is a painter, he dreams to express his

protest against the war by artistic means. Both J. Andrews in the book & J.

D. Passos fear capitalist tyranny & revolutionary enthusiasm. Antibourgeois

pathos is rather strong.

These tendencies increase in his next works. “Manhattan Transfer”

(novel) is a kaleidoscope of numerous episodes, names, dates where the

reader can hardly find the characters. It consists of independent stories,

which are all mixed. The only similar feature is the place & the time. Dos

Passos considered that such composition will enable him to show the reality

objectively, a stream of New York life. Characters represent different

social layers. The author introduces clips from newspapers, some glimpses

of literature, which are not connected with the novel. It produces

disorder. But it was his intention – city is a chaos; life is a chaos.

Reaction to the novel was contradictory. Some thought that it was a

collectivist novel. Dos Passos was not in the individual lives, troubles or

joys. A collectivist writer was interested in social relations but the

paradox was that social relations were abstract from his work. He didn’t

dispose social. His attitude to the events is not clear. The lack of

objective conclusions was intentional but the writer can’t do that. He

tried to produce such works where the generalization should be.

He was popular in 20-30’s in Soviet Union, unfortunately his popularity

was short-lived for political reasons. As soon as he began to criticize &

warn against totalitarianism he fell out of grace. He lived through the

economic crises of 1929 & this found its expression in the novel “USA”.

Dos Passos wrote “USA” – a big epic where he paid more attention to

generalization. He wrote it for 20 years. It consists of 3 novels: “The 42

Parallel”, “1919”, “The Big Money”. Dos Passos tried to be more precise

with the composition, developed a scheme of it. It is a big panoramic work.

The real hero is American society, the country. It is shown against the

social background of the nation. It is an epic of American life. The

structure is very logical & coherent. Each chapter falls into several

parts, which are made up of for components & the combination of these

components is very different. These four components are:

V novel - the portraits of literary characters

V biographies of historical personalities

V news-reel, i.e. news of the day

V camera obscure (eye) – inner monologue of the author

Each piece has a title & a number. The biographies of historical

personality were intended to create the historical background, dedicated to

famous people of political, social, scientific, artistic activities. It

included the stories about the outstanding people.

News of the day was to documentarize the specific moments in the USA

history to create the historical colouring & objective picture of that

epoch. It included popular songs, headlines from papers. Here they try to

follow the stream of consciousness of the newspaper reader.

Camera obscure were to show the author’s attitude to life, to bring an

individual lyrical touch to the story, personal meditations upon certain

subjects, reminiscences of the things passed, expression of author’s ideas

upon various aspects of life. It gave a picture of the author’s evaluation

for 30 years.

Novels are fictions. The portraits of literary characters were imaginary

literary heroes. There were 11 of them – typical representatives of all the

layers of the American society. The central characters John Wool McHouse.

The author tries to trace his relations with other characters but it

doesn’t mean that he knows all of them.

From the unique combination of these elements the unique picture of

American life springs up. The general mood is that of confusion, tension,

tumult, frustration of hopes, feeling that the present is ugly &

intolerable. People are too fussy about their daily routine. In this work

he showed how life was lived on the national scale.

Dos Passos was concerned with the history of the country primarily. The

writer must be an architect of history. His work was a literary conclusion

– different elements were assembled. The work is considered to be an

achievement in the American literature. The author tried to use

cinematographic principles in writing: close up, precision in details, the

art of assembly. He also used the technique of montage or juxtaposition. In

his later works he perfected this technique & achieved quite a success in

it. Later he became a radical writer. He was a passionate individualist &

individual freedom was most important to him.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

He belongs to the lost generation but he gave his own name to it – “jazz

age”. Jazz was representative of the general atmosphere of the years – the

feeling of instability in life. Age of transition of social values. To his

mind jazz beat ideally expressed that feeling of hopeless despair with

which his young men & women tried to experience the every passing moment of

their lives, their age. There is a recurrent “capre diem”(лови момент)

theme in his novels. His heroes indulge & overindulge. Jazz age expresses

instability & changebility of life present in mind of many people who tried

to flee from the feeling of being lost, for they no longer believed in

life, so they tried to live it to their full. Fitzgerald was not very rich

but was educated in Princeton. He dropped out of it because of poor health

& poor performance, he didn’t get to front though he enlisted. He was

painfully aware of the difference between himself & rich students. He had

hatred for the rich. The main topic of his work – money & its corruptive

influence. For him money & wealth were social categories. He regarded the

rich to be another race, whose habits & moral principles differ very much.

He looked into the phenomenon of being rich. For him a rich person is one

for whom everything is permitted & they lack human qualities, he tried to

penetrate to the very heart of the matter. So, money & wealth for him were

not economic categories but social phenomena. He regarded rich as another

race, alien kind of people whose habits, moral principles, views were not

as the habits of the ordinary people. They are the people to whom

everything is permitted & consequently they lack certain human qualities

that of pity, compassion, and sympathy. In his works Fitzgerald striped

this world of this mysterious veil. He tried to penetrate to the very

depths exploring the ethics of the rich world. Wealth has dehumanizing

impact on human personality. He had a feeling that something awful is

coming. “All the stories that come to my head have touch of disaster”. He

produced the collection of short stories “All the Sad Young Men”, “Tales of

the Jazz Age”. They are permeated with appocaliptical feeling of tragedy

of American life. Fitzgerald was not the only one who treated this topic –

Theodore Dreiser in “American Tragedy” did the same.

His finest achievement is the novel “The Great Gatsby” which showed the

contrast between material wealth & the spiritual poverty of the heroes.

Concerning this work in Soviet criticism the term “поэзия отрицательных

величин” was used. It means that he tried to show people who were real

characters, strong individuals, but this all is directed not to a right

channel – to make one’s life to the top, to get something from life, strive

for the world success. For Gatsby wealth is not the purpose but means to

have everything that money can give, a key to personal happiness =

relations between Jay Gatsby & Daisy whom he loves. In youth he suffered

feeling of inferiority, for she was the daughter of rich parents & he was a

poor soldier. He seeks to get money by bootlegging but it turned out that

happiness could not be achieved even with money because Daisy had changed,

she is very deaf & blind spiritually, feeling of all-permissiveness

increased in her. She doesn’t stop short in the fraud (car accident).

Gatsby was killed, Daisy departed, fled with her husband without any

remorse. Gatsby’s tragedy lies in the fact that he hoped to find happiness,

sympathy, love in the world where these feelings don’t exist. The tragedy

is that money changes people & money changed him & Daisy & he didn’t

understand this tragedy couldn’t foresee it.

Was he a positive or a negative character for the author? He possesses

good moral qualities but he is not the paragon of moral beauty, he obtained

his wealth by not clear ways. It’s clear that he is a tragic person. He

wastes his talent for money. Very often he is compared to Clyde Griffite

(Dreiser’s). But Gatsby is a personality.

Fitzgerald’s own story in a way repeats Gatsby’s story: he lived

bohemian life, gradually writing became an obligation. He appeared to be a

hostage of his own success. He also had drinking problems, & his wife whom

he loved very deeply had some mental problems.

The other works are “This Side of Paradise”, “Tender is the Night”, “The

Last Typcoon”, “The Beautiful & the Damned” where he developed the same

topic. Fitzgerald also had a dilemma & he had to choose to write for money

that ruined his health. He died in 1940.

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

A unique personality born in small town of Oxford (Mississippi) he grew

up in an impoverished southern aristocratic family & it had impact on him

(the spirit of the South). His education was not systematic. He inherited

the tragic confrontation of white & black. In 1925 he mat Sherwood

Anderson, dropped out of the university. He tried his hand in different

areas. After an unsuccessful attempt to become a pilot (was wounded in the

WWI), he did different odd jobs, worked in a bank, had a published

collection of poems. He wrote a couple of books imitating lost generation

novels. He produces novels “Soldier’s Pay”, “Mosquitoes”. Though published

they were not welcomed by critics. Their words were rather hush: “Faulkner

has no voice of his own, he has nothing to say.” So he decided to write in

a unique style, did not bother himself with any literary tradition. If you

don’t like it – it is your problem. All his life he lived in that small

town &it became a background for most of his books. It is known as

“Yoknapatawpha County”

But he found writing to be a pleasure for him. In 1929 he wrote “The

Sound & the Fury”, “Sartoris”. This year was a turning point for him. He

wrote as he pleased disregarding traditions. His perspective was to make

things clear to himself. He began to write about the things that he knew

firsthand. Both these novels look into the decay of south’s families.

Faulkner mercifully exposes the degradation of the South. There are moral

reasons for this: here the topic of slavery springs up, topic of incest,

moral impurity of people living there, their sins. At the same time one can

feel Faulkner’s anxiety even hatred about the civilization, contemporary

life. The civilization did only harm. The alternative is a patriarchal way

of living. Much as he scorned the past he still longed for those times.

He needn’t invent anything – “The Sound & the Fury” is taken from

Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. He alluded to the words that Macbeth said before

his death:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts & frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound & fury,

Signifying nothing.

It seems that the same feeling of confusion is familiar to Faulkner. The

story is about the decay of the Compson’s family. The novel consists of

four parts. The first is told by Benjamin Compson who is mentally

handicapped. He is that very idiot who tells the story of life’s confusion.

Events are given as fragments of his perception as if through the stain

glass. He doesn’t know what’s going on, he is subconsciously aware of the

conflict in the family. Everything is blurred, mixed, no chronology. We can

indicate time by the hints the characters drop now & then. He uses device

of interrelated temporal plains. The second part is told by Quentin. He is

a romantic type of a person who feels deeply & suffers deeply. He is too

fragile, too frail. He cannot cope with the harsh world (committed a

suicide). The third – by Jason Compson. He is practical, persistent,

knowing what he waits from life, a tenacious man. The fourth is told by

Faulkner himself. He tries to be objective, was to put everything their

places. Everything is centred round their sister Caddy. Use of subjective

viewpoint, inner monologue, stream of consciousness – achieved a striking

effect – highly individual characters become universal types: Bengy –

childish perception, Quentin – adolescent consciousness, Jason – pragmatic.

All of them are contrasted to authors representation of things – combining

particular & general. The degradation of one family is the symbol of the

decline of the South in general. He shows that the family gradually

collapses, people are driven to death & despair. Life is chaos of sound &

fury. Another message was that Faulkner himself didn’t put up with darkness

& gloom. Positive note is present in the book. His intentions are realized

in the fourth part.

The following works treated the same topic. In 1945 he produced the

chronological supplement to the work “Light in August”, “Absalom!

Absalom!”, “The Sanctuary”, “ As I Lay Dying”.

The decline of the South, race conflict & the constant overlap of the

past & the present, loss of human values are the themes of his works. A

line of descendants of formerly rich South families. The values of the past

generation became corrupted in the modern world. Atmosphere of doomed

despair. He got a Nobel prize in 1950. The values for him are courage,

honour, pride, hope, sympathy, self-sacrifice, compassion.

In 30’s his style changed. These works are easy to read. He turns to

another topic – the trilogy “The Hamlet”, “The Town”, “The Mansion”. He

thought he had spotted a disease in American society called “snopecism”

(from Flem Snopes – the main character of one of the parts of the trilogy).

Snopecism is evil, the product of capitalist civilization, lust for money,

put on the pedestal of American society. Money dominates American life. It

is people’s God. The trilogy is written in a realistic key. It deals with

the snopes – former poor white people. Flem is the first in the rank who by

cunning, corruption, bribe, general unscrupulousness elevated himself to a

ruling financial class. It is shown how this lust for money leads Flem to

come over his friends, family to power. Faulkner shows that a collision

with Snopes ruins people, especially if they are not of his kind. He is to

blame for many deaths. He didn’t do it with his own hands but he drove them

to such circumstances. He is not human. Makes him socially dangerous.

People fall victims of his thirst for money. The character who opposes Flem

is his stepdaughter Linda. Faulkner makes her a communist (probably he saw

no other force in the society that could oppose snopecism as a social

phenomenon).

The change in Faulkner’s outlook resulted in the structure of the novel.

Chain of associations is not so unruly as previously.

Faulkner is also famous for his short stories collected into two

volumes:

“Knight’s Gambit”

“Collected Stories”

Their theme is decline & deterioration o South. Here we meet the same

heroes or allusions to the characters & events of earlier novels. Every

book is interrelated. “The Bear” is a perfect example of Faulkner’s style.

It illustrates his concerns. Faulkner had a reputation of a writer for

intellectuals.

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)

He laid the foundation forAmerican drama. He comes form actor’s family,

education was not systematic, he did different odd jobs – gold digger in

Gonduras, sailor, journalist, etc. This enriched him with knowledge of life

firsthand. He developed interest for drama when he treated his tuberculosis

in sanatorium. He read Ibsen. Then after he took a course in theory of

drama in Harvard. 1914 is his literary debut “Thirst & Other One-Act

Plays”. From 1919 O’Neill collaborated with Provincetown players company.

They staged his first works, & with this company his success is associated.

He worked with them up to 1924. The plays of this period:

“The Emperor Jones”

“The Hairy Ape”

“All God’s Chillun Got Wings” (chillun = children)

These plays voiced his protest against racism & exploitation. His plays

differed from typical Broadway production. They are very experimental. On

the one hand, they are realistic dramas, showing the life of people who

never before were the subject of writers’ interest. On the other hand, his

plays exhibit his search for the adequate form to treat this topic.

Traditional realism is combined with the elements of expressionist drama,

touch of Ibsen’s influence; innovative approach to the use of the elements

of classical drama & biblical motives. [Ibsen introduced the drama of

ideas, where not the events were important but ideas that were discussed &

disclosed by these events. He is very close to Chekhov]

“The Hairy Ape” is a story of a young proletariat Robert Smith whom

everybody calls Jank. He was offended by a daughter of a certain man of

property & so he is expressed his …to such a degree that he was put to jail

where he absorbed certain socialistic ideas. But when he is released he

tries to find his “братьев по духу” he is taken for provocateur. He is very

much shocked and baffled so he goes to the zoo where he lets an ape out of

the cage. Eventually this ape kills him & he dies in the ape’s cage.

His remarks to the play are very important & he pays great attention to

the setting. First scene shows the worker’s dwelling. It must remind a cage

by O’Neill. Then the scene shifts to a stove-hall is shown. There must be a

flame: the fire symbolizes the hell of capitalists exploitation. The next

scene shows the fashionable hotel – the paradise of the rich. The last

scene is also an ape cage. It finishes the cycle.

The naturalistic symbolism conveys the idea of inhumanity of exploiters,

shifts the accents from the conditions, turning man to a beast to the

biological characteristics.

In his work of 30-40’s experiment takes to realism.

“The Great God Brown”

“Lazarus Laughed”

“Strange Interlude”

He resorted to various techniques of modern theatre – psychoanalysis,

inner monologue, mask theatre.

His masterpiece is trilogy “Mourning Becomes Electra”. Here he develops

classical notion of the tragic & transfers it to American soil of the civil

war period. He takes an eternal conflict & puts it to America. Histories of

O’Neill’s characters are compared to the lives of Electra, Orestas,

Clitemnestra. But the environment is different.

Later he intended to write a saga about wealthy people. It materialized

in two plays:

“A Touch of the Poet”

“More Stately Mansions”

O’Neill showed how several generations of American families gradually

lose their values, their destines mingle. Individual lives become part of

national history.

The plays crowning his career are “A Moon for the Misbegotten”, “Long

Day’s Journey into Night”. The latter is the most autobiographical.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

He is a southerner born in Columbus, Missouri, where his grandfather was

the Episcopal clergyman. When he was 12 his father who was a travelling

salesman moved with his family to St. Louis, & both he & his sister found

it impossible to settle down to the city life. He entered college during

the Depression & left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a

shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing.

He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 & completed his course, at the

same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He

received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play “Battle of Angels” &

he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 & 1955.

In 1940 he started journey around the country & ended it up in New York.

There he wrote poetry & short stories. 1945 – his first success “The Glass

Menagerie”. Autobiographical elements are very strong in the play. Williams

managed to create a special lyrical atmosphere of the Wickfield family. It

consists of three people – mother, crippled daughter & son. Each of them

lives in his or her own glass menagerie i.e. imaginary world which has

nothing to do with reality. They fear the reality, its hoarse & repulsive

jungle for they cannot adjust to the law of these jungles. Main idea is

that kindness & good feelings are doomed in clash with reality. These

people are too fragile, too sensitive.

The play introduced features of new plastic theatre. The principles of

this theatre Williams formulated in the afterward to the play “Note for

Reproduction”. It is characterized by tense emotional atmosphere, certain

romanticism, masterly music & light effects, attention is given to

cinography & attraction of expressive means of other arts. In stage remarks

Williams is scrupulous about details for they bear important meaning. he

calculated to produce certain effect on the audience.

His second play “A Streetcar Named Desire” gained him a reputation of

leading stage writer & Pulitzer Prize. In this play there is a clash

between realism & imagination; physical forces, brutishness & helplessness;

sexual drive &thirst for poetic love; naked ugly truth & illusion, world of

fantasy. The main character is Blanche du Beau. The action takes place in

New Orleans in French quarters (it is often compared to the “Cherry

Orchard” by Chekhov). Blanche visits her sister’s family after their

parents died & the family estate is sold. Blanche wears old ridiculously

looking dresses as a symbol of the world she lives in. Blanche meets her

sister’s brute of a husband Stan. Her sister gets out of the way to the

hospital to give birth to a baby. Blanche and Stan detest each other. He

hates a woman who lives in Ivory tower & she hates his brutishness. She

denies & longs for him at the same time. In the end he is taken into

lunatic asylum.

Williams plays with human subconsciuosness. But he finds that the core

of the conflict is not inherent in the struggle between masculine &

feminine but a complex interrelation of personal circumstances: social &

others.

Tennessee Williams’ human type is an outcast, lonely, constantly in

search of a relative soul with whom to share a burden of loneliness. But

life is such that the outsider is doomed to defeat. The only salvation is

love (but even this is questionable). Broken & lost people who are not able

to defend themselves & their dreams can find love that will help them to

sustain.

Williams is a prolific writer, he also wrote 2 collections of poems. He

combined poetry & realism & this unique combination singles him out from

other writers.

“Camino Real” is an allegoric drama, very experimental. “This is my

conception of contemporary world in which I live,” he said. The scene is

divided into two parts:

V fashionable hotel in which people are bored & degraded

V slums in which people are weak, humiliated, apathetic

The town is in terror, free thoughts are persecuted, people are killed

in the streets, brainwashing is actively underway. All problems are solved

by an old gypsy woman who provides a certain entertainment. The city is

called Camino Real[re’a:l], that is the way of hope & dream. It ends to

sound real[ri:al], that is the way of reality, dead end of civilization.

Killroy is an ordinary American who feels that atmosphere of social

hysteria & he tries to make sense in life. Old literary characters (Don

Quixote, Byron) come to rescue him. The play has an optimistic ending:

Killroy finally finds the way out of the city to terra incognita. Williams

idealized past, his future is uncertain. His past is good but dead, & the

present is abhorrent.

His other plays “Baby Doll”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, “Something

Unspoken”, “Suddenly Last Summer”, “Sweet Bird of Youth”, “The Milk Train

Doesn’t Stop Here Any More”, “The Night of the Iguana”, etc.

Post Modernism.

Post modernism can be regarded in two aspects:

V as a literary trend

V as a phenomenon which doesn’t belong exclusively to literature – a

certain mentality of post industrial age.

Post modernism appeared after the second WW. In 50’s, especially 60’s

new type of fiction, new writing emerged, drastically different from

previous writers. The idea that permeated this works: there is need to

reevaluate old values, the values that lead Western civilization (idea of

emancipation, enlightenment). But the WWII showed that the belief that a

human is a reasonable creature who can build a reasonable society is

inconsistent.

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