“Not money, but feelings”: A Survey of Tennessee Williams’s Stories in Brazil
This article examines the editorial trajectory of Tennessee Williams’s short fiction in Brazil, identifying the various historical and cultural contexts that enabled its publication, circulation, and critical reception. It begins with the observation that his novellas and short stories were publishe...
Gardado en:
| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
|---|---|
| Autor Principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
| Publicado: |
Journal of the Short Story in English
2026
|
| Acceso en liña: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This article examines the editorial trajectory of Tennessee Williams’s short fiction in Brazil, identifying the various historical and cultural contexts that enabled its publication, circulation, and critical reception. It begins with the observation that his novellas and short stories were published even during the country’s civil-military dictatorship, despite the thematic restrictions imposed by state censorship. The argument is that the formal ambiguity, symbolic strategies, and international prestige of the author contributed to allowing texts with potentially subversive content to slip past the regime’s ideological controls. The focus is on how these publications introduced a new reading of Tennessee Williams in Brazil—one that diverged from the image cemented by his major plays. The article also examines how the broader body of Tennessee Williams’s short fiction gradually gained visibility in Brazil, expanding the perception of the author beyond his canonical plays. It discusses the impact of these publications on academic discourse in the country, including the emergence of studies that investigate the connections between his short fiction and his dramatic works, as well as inquiries into genre, narrative structure, and the representation of dissident subjectivities. By reconstructing these stages, the article argues that the presence of Tennessee Williams’s short stories in Brazil serves as an index of structural contradictions between censorship, cultural circulation, and symbolic dispute. It concludes that, even in the absence of an explicit political project, these texts produced meaningful effects by opening space for critical reading, non-normative representation, and symbolic resistance to repressive orders—both during the dictatorship years and in the contemporary cultural landscape. |
|---|