The Metatheater of Tennessee Williams

<p> Tennessee Williams' characters set the stage for their own dramas. Blanche DuBois (<I>A Streetcar Named Desire</I>) arrived at her sister's apartment with an entire trunk of costumes and props. Amanda Wingfield (<I>The Glass Menagerie</I>) directed her son on how to eat and tries to make her daughter act like a Southern Belle.</p><p> This book argues for the persistence of one metatheatrical strategy running throughout Williams' entire oeuvre: each play stages the process through which it came into being--and this process consists of a variation on repetition combined with transformation. Each chapter takes a detailed reading of one play and its variation on repetition and transformation. Specific topics include reproduction in <I>Sweet Bird of Youth</I> (1959) mediation in <I>Something Cloudy Something Clear</I> (1981) and how the playwright frequently recycled previous works of art including his own.</p>