Cultural Readings Of Restoration And Eighteenth Century English Theater

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Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater

Author : Deborah Payne Fisk,J. Douglas Canfield
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2010-12-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780820337890

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Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater by Deborah Payne Fisk,J. Douglas Canfield Pdf

Ranging in approach from feminist to historicist, the eleven essays in this collection share the culturalist premise that the drama of late Stuart and early Georgian England helped to constitute the dominant ideology of the period. The contributors' varied approaches allow for the reconsideration of libertinism, the politics of sexual desire, and other classic issues, as well as such newer concerns as the social construction of the first English actresses, empiricism as an emergent epistemological discourse, cultural anxiety about novelty and repetition, and shifting tropes of inherent worth. By reading well-known works in unexpected ways and focusing on less frequently studied dramatists, from Sedley, Motteux, Pix, and Behn to Manley, Trotter, and Shadwell, the contributors also test the limits of the canon. In addition, they suggest that earlier critical perceptions, perhaps even more than the “innate worth” of the plays, determined the shape of the canon. These essays present a different image of Restoration and eighteenth-century theater, one that reveals how the drama was a site as important for the negotiation of cultural meaning as were novels and verse satires.

The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre

Author : Deborah Payne Fisk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2000-05-11
Category : Drama
ISBN : 052158812X

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The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre by Deborah Payne Fisk Pdf

Fourteen specially commissioned essays provide essential information about staging, playwrights, themes and genres in the drama of the Restoration.

Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play

Author : Deborah C. Payne
Publisher : Springer
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2017-02-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783319465142

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Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play by Deborah C. Payne Pdf

This collection of essays centres on Double Falsehood, Lewis Theobald’s 1727 adaptation of the “lost” play of Cardenio, possibly co-authored by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. In a departure from most scholarship to date, the contributors fold Double Falsehood back into the milieu for which it was created rather than searching for traces of Shakespeare in the text. Robert D. Hume’s knowledge of theatre history permits a fresh take on the forgery question as well as the Shakespeare authorship controversy. Diana Solomon’s understanding of eighteenth-century rape culture and Jean I. Marsden’s command of contemporary adaptation practices both emphasise the play’s immediate social and theatrical contexts. And, finally, Deborah C. Payne’s familiarity with the eighteenth-century stage allows for a reconsideration of Double Falsehood as integral to a debate between Theobald, Alexander Pope, and John Gay over the future of the English drama.

English Drama

Author : Richard W. Bevis
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2014-06-06
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317870920

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English Drama by Richard W. Bevis Pdf

What were the causes of Restoration drama's licentiousness? How did the elegantly-turned comedy of Congreve become the pointed satire of Fielding? And how did Sheridan and Goldsmith reshape the materials they inherited? In the first account of the entire period for more than a decade, Richard Bevis argues that none of these questions can be answered without an understanding of Augustan and Georgian history. The years between 1660 and 1789 saw considerable political and social upheaval, which is reflected in the eclectic array of dramatic forms that is Georgian theatre's essential characteristic.

Character's Theater

Author : Lisa A. Freeman
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780812201949

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Character's Theater by Lisa A. Freeman Pdf

If the whole world acted the player, how did the player act the world? In Character's Theater, Lisa A. Freeman uses this question to test recent critical discussion of eighteenth-century literature and culture. Much current work, she observes, focuses on the concept of theatricality as both the governing metaphor of social life and a primary filter of psychic perception. Hume's "theater of the mind," Adam Smith's "impartial spectator," and Diderot's "tableaux" are all invoked by theorists to describe a process whereby the private individual comes to internalize theatrical logic and apprehend the self as other. To them theatricality is a critical mechanism of modern subjectivity but one that needs to be concealed if the subject's stability is to be maintained. Finding that much of this discussion about the "Age of the Spectator" has been conducted without reference to the play texts or actual theatrical practice, Freeman turns to drama and discovers a dynamic model of identity based on eighteenth-century conceptualizations of character. In contrast to the novel, which cultivated psychological tensions between private interiority and public show, dramatic characters in the eighteenth century experienced no private thoughts. The theater of the eighteenth century was not a theater of absorption but rather a theater of interaction, where what was monitored was not the depth of character, as in the novel, but the arc of a genre over the course of a series of discontinuous acts. In a genre-by-genre analysis of plays about plays, tragedy, comedies of manners, humours, and intrigue, and sentimental comedy, Freeman offers an interpretive account of eighteenth-century drama and its cultural work and demonstrates that by deploying an alternative model of identity, theater marked a site of resistance to the rise of the subject and to the ideological conformity enforced through that identity formation.

Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater

Author : Diana Solomon
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 163 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2013-04-11
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781644530771

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Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater by Diana Solomon Pdf

Often perceived as merely formulaic or historical documents, dramatic prologues and epilogues – players’ comic, poetic bids for the audience’s good opinion – became essential parts of Restoration theater, appearing in over 90 percent of performed and printed plays between 1660 and 1714. Their popularity coincided with the rise of the English actress, and Prologues and Epilogues of Restoration Theater unites these elements in the first book-length study on the subject. It finds that these paratexts provided the first sanctioned space for actresses in Britain to voice ideas in public, communicate directly with other women, and perform comedy – arguably the most powerful type of speech, and one that enabled interrogation of misogynist social practices. This book provides a taxonomy of prologues and epilogues with a corresponding appendix, and demonstrates through case studies of Anne Bracegirdle and Anne Oldfield how the study of prologues and epilogues enriches Restoration theater scholarship. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Theatre and Culture in Early Modern England, 1650-1737

Author : Catie Gill
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2017-03-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351880121

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Theatre and Culture in Early Modern England, 1650-1737 by Catie Gill Pdf

Framed by the publication of Leviathan and the 1713 Licensing Act, this collection provides analysis of both canonical and non-canonical texts within the scope of an eighty-year period of theatre history, allowing for definition and assessment that uncouples Restoration drama from eighteenth-century drama. Individual essays demonstrate the significant contrasts between the theatre of different decades and the context of performance, paying special attention to the literary innovation and socio-political changes that contributed to the evolution of drama. Exploring the developments in both tragedy and comedy, and in literary production, specific topics include the playwright's relationship to the monarch, women writers' connection to the audience, the changing market for plays, and the rise of the bourgeoisie. This collection also examines aspects of gender and class through the exploration of women's impact on performance and production, masculinity and libertinism, master/servant relationships, and dramatic representations of the coffee house. Accompanied by a list of Spanish-English plays and a chronology of monarch's reigns and significant changes in theatre history, From Leviathan to Licensing Act is a valuable tool for scholars of Restoration and eighteenth-century performance, providing groundwork for future research and investigation.

Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence

Author : Emma Depledge
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2018-07-26
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781108427104

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Shakespeare's Rise to Cultural Prominence by Emma Depledge Pdf

Argues that the Exclusion Crisis of 1678-82 should be considered the watershed moment in Shakespeare's authorial afterlife.

New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth Century Literature

Author : Aleksondra Hultquist,Elizabeth J. Mathews
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2016-07-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317196938

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New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth Century Literature by Aleksondra Hultquist,Elizabeth J. Mathews Pdf

This first critical collection on Delarivier Manley revisits the most heated discussions, adds new perspectives in light of growing awareness of Manley’s multifaceted contributions to eighteenth-century literature, and demonstrates the wide range of thinking about her literary production and significance. While contributors reconsider some well-known texts through her generic intertextuality or unresolved political moments, the volume focuses more on those works that have had less attention: dramas, correspondence, journalistic endeavors, and late prose fiction. The methodological approaches incorporate traditional investigations of Manley, such as historical research, gender theory, and comparative close readings, as well as some recently influential theories, like geocriticism and affect studies. This book forges new paths in the many underdeveloped directions in Manley scholarship, including her work’s exploration of foreign locales, the power dynamics between individuals and in relation to states, sexuality beyond heteronormativity, and the shifting operations and influences of genre. While it draws on previous writing about Manley’s engagement with Whig/Tory politics, gender, and queerness, it also argues for Manley’s contributions as a writer with wide-ranging knowledge of both the inner sanctums of London and the outer developing British Empire, an astute reader of politics, a sophisticated explorer of emotional and gender dynamics, and a flexible and clever stylist. In contrast to the many ways Manley has been too easily dismissed, this collection carefully considers many points of view, and opens the way for new analyses of Manley’s life, work, and vital contributions to the full range of forms in which she wrote.

Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy

Author : M. Anderson
Publisher : Springer
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2002-02-22
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780312292751

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Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy by M. Anderson Pdf

Aphra Behn, Susannah Centlivre, Hannah Cowley, and Elizabeth Inchbald were the only four female playwrights in England with multiple comic successes from 1670-1800. Behn's interest in the body, Centlivre's fascination with written contracts, Cowley's nationalism, and Inchbald's discussion of divorce emerge in the comic events that are animated by the psychological mechanisms of humor. Attending to the dialogue between these comic events and the plays' more predictable comic endings illuminates the philosophical, political, and legal arguments about women and marriage that fascinated both female playwrights and the theatergoing public.

Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre

Author : Nancy Copeland
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2019-09-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351898249

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Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre by Nancy Copeland Pdf

Staging Gender in Behn and Centlivre studies the representation of gender in four of the most important plays by the leading professional women playwrights of the late Stuart period. Behn's The Rover (1677) and The Luckey Chance (1686) and Centlivre's The Busie Body (1709) and The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret (1714) are first placed in their original theatrical and cultural contexts and then studied through subsequent productions and adaptations extending from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. The detailed analysis of these plays is framed by a discussion of the cultural position of the playwrights and the kind of comedy they wrote. The survival of these plays in the repertoire offers an unusual opportunity to examine the theatrical 'double life' of works by early women playwrights. The lengthy production histories of these comedies placed them in dialogue with radically different ideas of appropriate and permissible behavior for both women and men. The resulting productions, alterations, and adaptations included both feminist reinterpretations and recuperations of the plays' challenges to dominant meanings of gender. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of dramatic literature, theatre, and women's studies.

Heroes and States

Author : J. Douglas Canfield
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2014-10-17
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780813159584

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Heroes and States by J. Douglas Canfield Pdf

To understand the cultural history of England during the Restoration, one need look no further than the theater, which was attended by the gentry as well as by members of the middle and lower classes. The theater of this period embodied the values, meanings, and power relations of Restoration England. In Heroes and States, Douglas Canfield argues that drama not only represents but actually helps constitute the value and belief systems of an entire culture. Heroes and States completes Canfield's two-volume cultural history of Restoration drama, begun in Tricksters and Estates: On the Ideology of Restoration Comedy. In this second volume Canfield shows how Restoration playwrights attempted to rein scribe late-feudal aristocratic ideology after the English Civil War. In the serious drama of the period, conflict is between noble heroes, upon whom states are built, and transgressors of the established order -- tyrants, traitors, usurpers, rapists, and atheists. Canfield considers several sub genres of tragedy. He argues that most of these sub genres reaffirm the older ideology after testing it in the fires of conflict. Tragical satire, on the other hand, the most subversive of these sub genres, exposes the failure of the ruling class to live up to its own codes and, in some cases, the absurdity of the codes themselves. Canfield also finds playwrights struggling with issues of race and colonialism. He uses the work of modern theorists such as Bakhtin, Girard, Kristeva, Derrida, Althusser, Williams, and Eagleton to illuminate aspects of his inquiries. Restoration tragedy stands on the cusp of a cultural transition from a late feudal to an early bourgeois ideology, and the issues and themes addressed in the theater validate the culture and politics of seventeenth-century England.

Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-raisers, and Afterpieces

Author : Daniel James Ennis,Judith Bailey Slagle
Publisher : University of Delaware Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0874139678

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Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-raisers, and Afterpieces by Daniel James Ennis,Judith Bailey Slagle Pdf

Prologues, Epilogues, Curtain-Raisers, and Afterpieces: The Rest of the Eighteenth-Century London Stage presents a fresh analysis of the complete theater evening that was available to playhouse audiences from the Restoration to the early nineteenth century. The contributing scholars focus not on the mainpiece, the advertised play itself, but on what surrounded the mainpiece for the total theater experience of the day. Various critical essays address artistic disciplines such as dance and theatrical portraits, while others concentrate on peripheral performance texts, including prologues, epilogues, pantomimes, and afterpieces, that merged to define the overall theatrical event.

Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater, 1660-1800

Author : Mita Choudhury
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : English drama
ISBN : 0838754481

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Interculturalism and Resistance in the London Theater, 1660-1800 by Mita Choudhury Pdf

In an original contribution to criticism, Interculturalism and Resistance demonstrates the eighteenth-century theatrical culture's ambivalence toward what has recently been described as the "exoticism of multiculturalism.""--BOOK JACKET.

Women and Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century

Author : Fiona Ritchie
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2014-06-02
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781107046306

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Women and Shakespeare in the Eighteenth Century by Fiona Ritchie Pdf

This book establishes the significance of actresses, female playgoers and women critics in shaping Shakespeare's burgeoning reputation in the eighteenth century.