What books have their meanings changed by background information?

Question

Additional information on literature can change the ways in which it is read and understood. For example biographical information on Bronte is often used in Jane Eyre and knowing this gives the reader a greater understanding of the story. What other literature or prose does this?

Answer 1

The plays of Tennessee Williams are far more readily appreciated if one is aware of details of his life. Tennessee Williams drew heavily on his family experiences in his writings. When "The Glass Menagerie" hit Broadway in 1945, it not only changed Tennessee Williams' life, it revolutionized American theatre. It was the most strongly autobiographical of all his plays . Tennessee was close to his sister, Rose, who had perhaps the greatest influence on him. She was a slim beauty who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent most of her adult life in mental hospitals. After various unsuccessful attempts at therapy, she became paranoid. Her parents eventually allowed a prefrontal lobotomy in an effort to treat her. The operation, performed in 1943, in Washington, D.C., went badly, and Rose remained incapacitated for the rest of her life.

Rose's failed lobotomy was a hard blow to Williams, who never forgave their parents for allowing the operation. It may have been one of the factors that drove him to alcoholism. The common "mad heroine" theme that appears in many of his plays may have been influenced by his sister.

Characters in his plays are often seen to be direct representations of his family members. Apart from forming th original for Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, Rose is believed by some to be portrayed also in the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.. The motif of lobotomy also arises in Suddenly, Last Summer. Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie can easily be seen to represent Williams's mother. Many of his characters are considered autobiographical, including Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer. Actress Anne Meacham was a close personal friend of Tennessee Williams and played the lead in many of his plays including Suddenly, Last Summer.

Tennessee Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. Merlo was a second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World War II . Together they vacationed in Italy where the writer drew inspiration from the passion for life he felt there.

In 1948, Williams wrote "The Rose Tattoo" -- a passionate comedy about old love lost, and new love found in the life of a family of Sicilian immigrants. The story line follows Williams' own life experiences in meeting Merlo. It stands out as the only major play by Williams that has a happy ending.

The works of Tennessee Williams are a prime example of how preoccupations in an author's life can permeate his writing.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Pimbley's Dictionary of Heraldic trademarks supplies the unique which potential of shells (escallops) as denoting individual who were the two on a campaign to the Holy Land or who had carried out the pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela, between the great shrines of the midsection a while. It then developed to denoting any variety of pilgrimage or long journey. to function some greater documents to what others have reported - palms in Scotland would desire to be granted and registered via the Lord Lyon, even once you are the eldest son taking on the "significant" palms on the dying of your father. And pay attention of showing or donning Scottish palms in Scotland in case you haven't any longer for my area been granted them via the Lyon, as you would be committing a offender offence and may well be prosecuted and fined £a hundred according to day for every day you unlawfully displayed the palms. in case you carve "your loved ones palms" into your partitions or get attractive stained glass made, you would be made to eliminate them or the Lyon court will deliver officers around to eliminate them for you! that's a extreme organization right here- don't be scammed via the "relatives crest" human beings.

Answer 4

The author of the ragged trousered philanthropists; Robert Tressell (Robert Noonan ) was a housepainter. he died of T.B. and was buried in a paupers grave. The MS of his book was not found until after his death. Anybody who reads it can understand how he drew extensively from his own experiences to write the classic novel of edwardian class based society and can not fail to feel in equal parts both pity and anger at the horrific and wretched conditions endured by the workers.

Answer 5

The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller has a much more complex meaning if you take into account the spectre of McCarthyism that haunted the USA at the time it was written.

Answer 6

Anything by JG Ballard is enriched by having read or seen "Empire of the Sun" and knowing that he was widowed at a comparitively young age.

Answer 7

...the odds against DNA assembling by chance are 1040,000 to one [according to Fred Hoyle, Evolution from Space,1981]. This is true, but highly misleading. DNA did not assemble purely by chance. It assembled by a combination of chance and the laws of physics. Without the laws of physics as we know them, life on earth as we know it would not have evolved in the short span of six billion years. The nuclear force was needed to bind protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms; electromagnetism was needed to keep atoms and molecules together; and gravity was needed to keep the resulting ingredients for life stuck to the surface of the earth.
--Victor J. Stenger*

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or "Life was always there', and be done with it. --Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker : Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design p. 141

... rarity by itself shouldn't necessarily be evidence of anything. When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable. --John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

Answer 8

For a full beckground report about anyone, try this service http://www.goobypls.com/r/rd.asp?gid=564

Answer 9

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