Tennessee Williams: Examining Portraiture
This teacher's guide provides portraits and analysis questions to enrich students' examination of Tennessee Williams, an American playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner. Includes the video "Defining Portraiture: How are portraits both fact and fiction?" and the National Portrait Gallery's "Reading" Portraiture Guide for Educators, both of which provide suggestions and questions for analyzing portraiture.
Consider:
- What do these portraits have in common? How are they different?
- How are these portraits both fact and fiction?
- How do these portraits reflect how they wanted to be seen, or how others wanted them to be seen? Consider for what purpose these portraits were created (such as Time Magazine, stamp, etc.).
- Having read one of his plays, does the portrait capture your image of Tennessee Williams? Why, or why not?
- If you were creating your own portrait of Tennessee Williams, what characteristics would you emphasize, and why?
Keywords: mississippi, ms, play, author, streetcar named desire, writer