Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending

Nicholas Moschovakis (Independent Scholar - North America)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1957

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

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Orpheus Descending and its Author

Orpheus Descending is Tennessee Williams’s revised version of his first professionally produced play, Battle of Angels. Battle opened at the end of 1940 in Boston – and had failed miserably there, closing at the end of its run. Williams, then still under thirty years old and virtually unknown, had created outrage with Battle’s sexual themes and its mix of Christian iconography with erotic imagery. But his disappointment was brief. Within a few years, in 1944-45, he had gained success with The Glass Menagerie. Yet the tragic subject of Battle still haunted him. Finally, in the 1950s – after he had won worldwide fame with such plays as Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire (and their film adaptations) – he created a new version

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3467 words

Citation: Moschovakis, Nicholas. "Orpheus Descending". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 June 2008; last revised 04 February 2022. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21682, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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