Death of a Salesman and The Glass Menagerie: A Phenomenological Reduction

Bakhtiar Naghdipour

Abstract


Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller were two memory playwrights who searched the memory or the collective unconscious of their generation for the lost dreams of an unspoiled myth as well as the genuine ideals of love, humanity and dignity. These authors employed techniques and mechanisms such as poetic language and expressionistic stage directions to translate the inner workings of their characters into artistic projection. This paper employs the phenomenological principles of Geneva School of criticism with the aim of reducing the immediate consciousness of Williams and Miller, projected as stories of Tom and Willy, in search for the playwrights’ attitudes towards some basic concepts of life in the modern era.

 


Keywords


Death of a Salesman, The Glass Menagerie, memory play, phenomenological reduction

Full Text:

PDF

References


Audi, R. (Ed.). (1999). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. (2nd ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bigsby, C. W. E. (1997a). Entering the glass menagerie. In Roudané, M. C. (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Tennessee Williams (pp. 29-44). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Bigsby, C. (Ed.). (1997b). The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dukore, B. F. (1989). Death of a Salesman and the Crucible: Text and Performance. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc.

Eagleton, T. (1989). Literary Theory: An Introduction. London: T. J. Press.

Haley, D. E. (1999). Certain Moral Values: A Rhetoric of Outcasts in the plays of Tennessee Williams. Unpublished Dissertation. University of Alabama.

Hammer, S. B. (2002). That Quite Little Play. In Gross, R. F. (Ed.), Tennessee Williams: A Casebook. London: Routledge.

Hintikka, J. (1995). The phenomenological dimension. In Smith, B. & Smith, D. W. (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, A. (1949). Death of a salesman. New York: Viking Press.

---. (1950, February 5). The ‘Salesman’ Has a Birthday. The New York Times, 1-3.

---. (1987). Timebends: A Life. London: Methuen.

Rimmon-Kenan, S. (2002). Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. (2nd ed). London: Routledge.

Roudané, M. C. (1997a). Death of a Salesman and the Poetics of Arthur Miller. In Bigsby, C. (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (60-85). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roudané, M. C. (Ed.). (1997b). The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Selden, R. (1989). Practicing Theory and Reading Literature: An Introduction. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Tischler, N. M. (1965). Tennessee Williams: Rebellious Puritan. New York: The Citadel Press.

Williams, T. (1949). The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.2n.3p.147

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.