Presented as a memory play, The Glass Menagerie complements the poet’s lifelong perception of and fascination with illusion and reality and shows William’s notion on the subjectivity of memory. In the post World War II backdrop of trauma and disillusionment and equipped with the heritage of Freud’s psychoanalysis theory, the functioning of the memory became an important theme in theatre as well as in other arts. American theatre when compared to other art forms was slow to change and hand in hand with Kingsley Amis, Tennessee Williams embraced the post war genre of realism and horror. With Williams’ The Glass Menagerie a significant breakthrough was attend in the dramatic technique and form: “The play stood at the nexus of old melodramatic
…show more content…
The characters are anti-heroes, family dysfunctional and the narrative an exploration of the psychology of people living at the marginal fringes of society and champion the depictions of the breakdown of the American dreams.
The Glass Menagerie exists within the post-war form of “domestic realism” In which the family as the representative of the American society is portrayed as one disintegrated or even as a failed institution. On the other hand Williams reinvents the genre adding a poetic layer. Inform Williams’ contrast “an essentially melodramatic vocabulary of the lost past.” (Aronson) With a revolutionary idea of the introduction of memory and the fluidity of its transition.
In the light of Williams’ career and the tradition of American theatre, The Glass Menagerie expanded the boundaries of theatricality itself. In his career as a playwright, his combination of lyricism/ poetic language and experimentalism revolutionized American drama in the post World War II scenario. The original nature of his theatrical imagination gives Williams a pivotal role on the American theatre and together with Edward Albee and Arthur Millar became the most prominent American dramatists of the second half of the 20th …show more content…
Although he does not provide a definite definition but ascribed the desired effects and implications: “because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material, atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part.” It maybe related with Favorini’s definition “One in which the intention to remember and/or forget comes prominently to the fore, with or without the aid of a remembering narrator; in which the phenomenon of memory is a distinct and central area of the drama’s attention… or in which memory or forgetting serves as a crucial factor in self-formation and/or self-deconstruction.”
The characters are anti-heroes, family dysfunctional and the narrative an exploration of the psychology of people living at the marginal fringes of society and champion the depictions of the breakdown of the American dreams.
The Glass Menagerie exists within the post-war form of “domestic realism” In which the family as the representative of the American society is portrayed as one disintegrated or even as a failed institution. On the other hand Williams reinvents the genre adding a poetic layer. Inform Williams’ contrast “an essentially melodramatic vocabulary of the lost past.” (Aronson) With a revolutionary idea of the introduction of memory and the fluidity of its transition.
In the light of Williams’ career and the tradition of American theatre, The Glass Menagerie expanded the boundaries of theatricality itself. In his career as a playwright, his combination of lyricism/ poetic language and experimentalism revolutionized American drama in the post World War II scenario. The original nature of his theatrical imagination gives Williams a pivotal role on the American theatre and together with Edward Albee and Arthur Millar became the most prominent American dramatists of the second half of the 20th …show more content…
Although he does not provide a definite definition but ascribed the desired effects and implications: “because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material, atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part.” It maybe related with Favorini’s definition “One in which the intention to remember and/or forget comes prominently to the fore, with or without the aid of a remembering narrator; in which the phenomenon of memory is a distinct and central area of the drama’s attention… or in which memory or forgetting serves as a crucial factor in self-formation and/or self-deconstruction.”