A Mythological Archetypal Study on A Streetcar Named Desire

Abstract

Tennessee Williams is regarded as one of the most significant figures throughout the history of American literature. Tennessee Williams is always seen as one of the most famous representative writers of American south along with Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor. A Streetcar Named Desire, first published in 1947, has run for almost 855 performances. It’s one of Williams’ most famous plays and it has always been studied in all aspects by numerous scholars for many years. Since Tennessee Williams lived in American south and his grandfather was an Anglican so there is no doubt that his works are influenced by the religion in American south and his own family. However, the researches on A Streetcar Named Desire from the perspective of mythological archetype are much fewer. Thus, this thesis is an attempt to employ Frye’s archetypal theory to analyze the mythological archetypal symbols of the environment, theme and characters in one of Tennessee Williams’ noted plays, A Streetcar Named Desire.

This thesis will be divided into four parts, including an introduction, the theoretical framework, an analyzing part and a conclusion. The first part of the thesis will contain the relative background information of Tennessee Williams and his play A Streetcar Named Desire and a comprehensive literature review of researches on A Streetcar Named Desire on the main perspectives. In the second part, the author introduces the development and the main ideas of Frazer, Jung and Frye’s theories.

The third part probes into the mythological archetype of the setting, characters and the theme. The author uses Fyre’s Myth-archetype theory to analyze the archetype of the setting of the play, the mythological archetypal characters and the theme in A Streetcar Named Desire. In the conclusion part, a general summary is given and the significance of analyzing the mythological archetypes in A Streetcar Named Desire is reaffirmed further. The author also analyzes the limitations and shortcomings of this thesis. What’s more, the use of mythological archetype in the play to some extent shows the playwright’s pity and sympathy for the decay of American south just as the loss of Eden as a southern writer, indicating his sense of nostalgia of the south.