Tennessee Williams's metatheatre (FWOTM605)

This project seeks to investigate some of the less-often studied plays by the American playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), informed by metatheatrical theory.The proposed research will try to uncover Williams's dramatisation of various attitudes vis-à-vis the theatre and thus offer a better insight into the playwright's stance on his own art. It aims to assess how Williams's metadrama developed over time, as literature in general shifted from modernism to the
arguably more self-reflexive postmodernism.Finally, because the material under discussion was primarily written to be performed, my study will take into account a number of contemporary Williams productions and examine how these articulate the metatheatrical potential inherent in the plays.

Keywords:linguistique et littérature, linguistics and literature

Disciplines:Languages and literary studies