Tennessee Williams: the uses of declarative memory in The Glass Menagerie.

Full Abstract

Tennessee Williams called his first great work, The Glass Menagerie, his "memory play." The situation in which Williams found himself when he began writing the play is explored, as are the ways in which he used the declarative memory of his protagonist, Tom Wingfield, to express and deal with his own painful conflicts. Williams's use of stage directions, lighting, and music to evoke memory and render it three-dimensional is described. Through a close study of The Glass Menagerie, the many uses of memory for the purposes of wish fulfillment, conflict resolution, and resilience are examined.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Jacobs, Daniel (D);

Affiliation: Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, USA. Danjacobs(-atsign-)rcn.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Biography; Historical Article; Journal Article

Journal: Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (J Am Psychoanal Assoc), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-; vol 50 (issue 4) : pp 1259-70

Dates: Created 2003/02/12; Completed 2003/04/22; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12580330, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

Missing what was true: problems of seeing and knowing in Henry James's The wings of the dove. 30 Jul 2005
Autopathography and depression: describing the 'despair beyond despair'. 30 Dec 2005
Ernest Hemingway: a psychological autopsy of a suicide. 30 Dec 2005
[Hypertension--what has changed since Molière and Hemingway?] 30 Oct 2007
[Thomas Mann as patient] 30 Dec 2005
Samuel Beckett's "Rockaby": dramatizing the plight of the solitary elderly at life's end. 30 Dec 2006
[When Paul Bourget frequented the "Infirmerie spéciale"] 29 Jun 2006
Being faithful: the ethics of homoaffection in Antonia Forest's Marlow novels. 30 Dec 2006
Medicine and the arts. The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney. Commentary. 29 Sep 2007
Robert Klopstock and Franz Kafka--the friends from Tatranské Matliare (the High Tatras). 30 Dec 2006

See 100+ related articles.