Author: John Robbins
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527581721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage is driven by a central question: why were women playwrights in the Romantic period obsessed with silencing their female characters, pushing them off the stage, and announcing the removal of their own texts to the closet? These playwrights were some of the most well-known and commercially successful writers of their era, but were paradoxically also among its most marginalized figures: they were mocked by largely conservative audiences, suffered intense criticism for placing their works on display before the public eye, and frequently found their plays rejected by theater managers in favor of works by established male playwrights. This book argues that these writers did not simply craft plays that would please the crowd, but that they deftly incorporated the suppressions and subjugations to which they were subject into their works. It demonstrates that within their plays, gaps in discourse and representation contain a productive capacity, denoting spaces of imaginative potential or drawing into focus the conditions by which such silencing and erasure takes place, and argues that the long-standing critical misapprehension of these works stems from precisely these strategies of resistance, which of necessity took non-traditional forms and thus have not been readily recognizable to audiences, then or now.
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage
Author: John Robbins
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527581721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage is driven by a central question: why were women playwrights in the Romantic period obsessed with silencing their female characters, pushing them off the stage, and announcing the removal of their own texts to the closet? These playwrights were some of the most well-known and commercially successful writers of their era, but were paradoxically also among its most marginalized figures: they were mocked by largely conservative audiences, suffered intense criticism for placing their works on display before the public eye, and frequently found their plays rejected by theater managers in favor of works by established male playwrights. This book argues that these writers did not simply craft plays that would please the crowd, but that they deftly incorporated the suppressions and subjugations to which they were subject into their works. It demonstrates that within their plays, gaps in discourse and representation contain a productive capacity, denoting spaces of imaginative potential or drawing into focus the conditions by which such silencing and erasure takes place, and argues that the long-standing critical misapprehension of these works stems from precisely these strategies of resistance, which of necessity took non-traditional forms and thus have not been readily recognizable to audiences, then or now.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527581721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169
Book Description
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage is driven by a central question: why were women playwrights in the Romantic period obsessed with silencing their female characters, pushing them off the stage, and announcing the removal of their own texts to the closet? These playwrights were some of the most well-known and commercially successful writers of their era, but were paradoxically also among its most marginalized figures: they were mocked by largely conservative audiences, suffered intense criticism for placing their works on display before the public eye, and frequently found their plays rejected by theater managers in favor of works by established male playwrights. This book argues that these writers did not simply craft plays that would please the crowd, but that they deftly incorporated the suppressions and subjugations to which they were subject into their works. It demonstrates that within their plays, gaps in discourse and representation contain a productive capacity, denoting spaces of imaginative potential or drawing into focus the conditions by which such silencing and erasure takes place, and argues that the long-standing critical misapprehension of these works stems from precisely these strategies of resistance, which of necessity took non-traditional forms and thus have not been readily recognizable to audiences, then or now.
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage
Author: JOHN. ROBBINS
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781527580954
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage is driven by a central question: why were women playwrights in the Romantic period obsessed with silencing their female characters, pushing them off the stage, and announcing the removal of their own texts to the closet? These playwrights were some of the most well-known and commercially successful writers of their era, but were paradoxically also among its most marginalized figures: they were mocked by largely conservative audiences, suffered intense criticism for placing their works on display before the public eye, and frequently found their plays rejected by theater managers in favor of works by established male playwrights. This book argues that these writers did not simply craft plays that would please the crowd, but that they deftly incorporated the suppressions and subjugations to which they were subject into their works. It demonstrates that within their plays, gaps in discourse and representation contain a productive capacity, denoting spaces of imaginative potential or drawing into focus the conditions by which such silencing and erasure takes place, and argues that the long-standing critical misapprehension of these works stems from precisely these strategies of resistance, which of necessity took non-traditional forms and thus have not been readily recognizable to audiences, then or now.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781527580954
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Displacing Female Bodies on the Eighteenth-Century Stage is driven by a central question: why were women playwrights in the Romantic period obsessed with silencing their female characters, pushing them off the stage, and announcing the removal of their own texts to the closet? These playwrights were some of the most well-known and commercially successful writers of their era, but were paradoxically also among its most marginalized figures: they were mocked by largely conservative audiences, suffered intense criticism for placing their works on display before the public eye, and frequently found their plays rejected by theater managers in favor of works by established male playwrights. This book argues that these writers did not simply craft plays that would please the crowd, but that they deftly incorporated the suppressions and subjugations to which they were subject into their works. It demonstrates that within their plays, gaps in discourse and representation contain a productive capacity, denoting spaces of imaginative potential or drawing into focus the conditions by which such silencing and erasure takes place, and argues that the long-standing critical misapprehension of these works stems from precisely these strategies of resistance, which of necessity took non-traditional forms and thus have not been readily recognizable to audiences, then or now.
Female Playwrights and Eighteenth-Century Comedy
Author: M. Anderson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0312292759
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0312292759
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
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.
Women, Nationalism, and the Romantic Stage
Author: Betsy Bolton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521771160
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
This 2001 book examines how Romantic women performers and playwrights used theatrical conventions to intervene in politics.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521771160
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
This 2001 book examines how Romantic women performers and playwrights used theatrical conventions to intervene in politics.
Castration, Impotence, and Emasculation in the Long Eighteenth Century
Author: Anne Leah Greenfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760669
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
This essay collection examines one of the most fearsome, fascinating, and hotly-discussed topics of the long eighteenth century: masculinity compromised. During this timespan, there was hardly a literary or artistic genre that did not feature unmanning regularly and prominently: from harrowing tales of castrations in medical treatises, to emasculated husbands in stage comedies, to sympathetic and powerful eunuchs in prose fiction, to glorious operatic performances by castrati in Italy, to humorous depictions in caricature and satirical paintings, to fearsome descriptions of Eastern eunuchs in travel narratives, to foolish and impotent old men who became a mainstay in drama. Not only does this unprecedented study of unmanning (in all of its varied forms) illustrate the sheer prevalence of a trope that featured prominently across literary and artistic genres, but it also demonstrates the ways diminished masculinity reflected some of the most strongly-held anxieties, interests, and values of eighteenth-century Britons.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760669
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
This essay collection examines one of the most fearsome, fascinating, and hotly-discussed topics of the long eighteenth century: masculinity compromised. During this timespan, there was hardly a literary or artistic genre that did not feature unmanning regularly and prominently: from harrowing tales of castrations in medical treatises, to emasculated husbands in stage comedies, to sympathetic and powerful eunuchs in prose fiction, to glorious operatic performances by castrati in Italy, to humorous depictions in caricature and satirical paintings, to fearsome descriptions of Eastern eunuchs in travel narratives, to foolish and impotent old men who became a mainstay in drama. Not only does this unprecedented study of unmanning (in all of its varied forms) illustrate the sheer prevalence of a trope that featured prominently across literary and artistic genres, but it also demonstrates the ways diminished masculinity reflected some of the most strongly-held anxieties, interests, and values of eighteenth-century Britons.
Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera
Author: Siu Leung Li
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622096034
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
The enchantment of the figure of the "male dan" – female impersonator – remains a residual element in the cultural imagination of many contemporary Chinese societies. The various kinds of interpretive possibilities in the commanding tradition of cross-dressing Chinese opera have yet to be examined in-depth. In order to discuss "mistaken identity" and gender issues as they relate to cross-dressing on the Chinese operatic stage, this book examines a wide range of materials, including traditional dramatic texts, modern literary writings, critical writings (for example, quhua), opera paintings, and contemporary movies. The book explores gendering and gender differences that are constructed, reproduced, dismantled, and contested in this particularly rich site of Chinese culture.
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622096034
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
The enchantment of the figure of the "male dan" – female impersonator – remains a residual element in the cultural imagination of many contemporary Chinese societies. The various kinds of interpretive possibilities in the commanding tradition of cross-dressing Chinese opera have yet to be examined in-depth. In order to discuss "mistaken identity" and gender issues as they relate to cross-dressing on the Chinese operatic stage, this book examines a wide range of materials, including traditional dramatic texts, modern literary writings, critical writings (for example, quhua), opera paintings, and contemporary movies. The book explores gendering and gender differences that are constructed, reproduced, dismantled, and contested in this particularly rich site of Chinese culture.
Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre
Author: P.A. Skantze
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134447264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre provides a comprehensive examination of this aesthetic theory. The author investigates this aesthetic history as a form of artistic creation, philosophical investigation, a way of representing and manipulating ideas about gender and a way of acknowledging, reinforcing and making a critique of social values for the still and moving, the permanent and elapsing. The book's analysis covers the entire seventeenth-century with chapters on the work of Ben Jonson, John Milton, the pamphletheatre, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh and Jeremy Collier and will be of interest to scholars in the areas of literary and performance studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134447264
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre provides a comprehensive examination of this aesthetic theory. The author investigates this aesthetic history as a form of artistic creation, philosophical investigation, a way of representing and manipulating ideas about gender and a way of acknowledging, reinforcing and making a critique of social values for the still and moving, the permanent and elapsing. The book's analysis covers the entire seventeenth-century with chapters on the work of Ben Jonson, John Milton, the pamphletheatre, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh and Jeremy Collier and will be of interest to scholars in the areas of literary and performance studies.
Gender, Pregnancy and Power in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Author: Jenifer Buckley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319538357
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
This book reveals the cultural significance of the pregnant woman by examining major eighteenth-century debates concerning separate spheres, man-midwifery, performance, marriage, the body, education, and creative imagination. Exploring medical, economic, moral, and literary ramifications, this book engages critically with the notion that a pregnant woman could alter the development of her foetus with the power of her thoughts and feelings. Eighteenth-century authors sought urgently to define, understand and control the concept of maternal imagination as they responded to and provoked fundamental questions about female intellect and the relationship between mind and body. Interrogating the multiple models of maternal imagination both separately and as a holistic set of socio-cultural components, the author uncovers the discourse of maternal imagination across eighteenth-century drama, popular print, medical texts, poetry and novels. This overdue rehabilitation of the pregnant woman in literature is essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth century, gender and literary history.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319538357
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
This book reveals the cultural significance of the pregnant woman by examining major eighteenth-century debates concerning separate spheres, man-midwifery, performance, marriage, the body, education, and creative imagination. Exploring medical, economic, moral, and literary ramifications, this book engages critically with the notion that a pregnant woman could alter the development of her foetus with the power of her thoughts and feelings. Eighteenth-century authors sought urgently to define, understand and control the concept of maternal imagination as they responded to and provoked fundamental questions about female intellect and the relationship between mind and body. Interrogating the multiple models of maternal imagination both separately and as a holistic set of socio-cultural components, the author uncovers the discourse of maternal imagination across eighteenth-century drama, popular print, medical texts, poetry and novels. This overdue rehabilitation of the pregnant woman in literature is essential reading for scholars of the eighteenth century, gender and literary history.
New Perspectives on Delarivier Manley and Eighteenth Century Literature
Author: Aleksondra Hultquist
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317196937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317196937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
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.
Frances Burney, Dramatist
Author: Barbara Darby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159318
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
The position Frances Burney (1752-1840) holds as a novelist, journalist, and letterwriter is now undisputed, thanks to reevaluations of the canon in recent years. Yet Burney was always intrigued by, and wrote for, the stage. Though only one of Burney's dramas was performed in her lifetime, Barbara Darby places the plays in the context of performance and feminist theory, challenging past assertions about Burney that were based entirely on her novels and journals. Darby maintains that in exposing the failure of such practices and institutions as courtship, marriage, family, government, and the church, Burney's dramas often exceed her novels in the depth of their social commentary. In her four comedies and four tragedies, Burney uses stage space, dialogue, blocking, and gesture to highlight the ways power is distributed among society's members. According to Darby, these plays show that the eighteenth-century female experience was dominated by physical, psychic, and emotional regulation that included bodily punishment and the limitation of personal choice. Placing Burney alongside other prominent female playwrights of the period, Darby brings to light a substantial body of work, revealing that Burney's drama was not a casual sideline to her novel writing. Frances Burney, Dramatist, expands our appreciation of the extent to which eighteenth-century women playwrights used the stage as a forum.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159318
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
The position Frances Burney (1752-1840) holds as a novelist, journalist, and letterwriter is now undisputed, thanks to reevaluations of the canon in recent years. Yet Burney was always intrigued by, and wrote for, the stage. Though only one of Burney's dramas was performed in her lifetime, Barbara Darby places the plays in the context of performance and feminist theory, challenging past assertions about Burney that were based entirely on her novels and journals. Darby maintains that in exposing the failure of such practices and institutions as courtship, marriage, family, government, and the church, Burney's dramas often exceed her novels in the depth of their social commentary. In her four comedies and four tragedies, Burney uses stage space, dialogue, blocking, and gesture to highlight the ways power is distributed among society's members. According to Darby, these plays show that the eighteenth-century female experience was dominated by physical, psychic, and emotional regulation that included bodily punishment and the limitation of personal choice. Placing Burney alongside other prominent female playwrights of the period, Darby brings to light a substantial body of work, revealing that Burney's drama was not a casual sideline to her novel writing. Frances Burney, Dramatist, expands our appreciation of the extent to which eighteenth-century women playwrights used the stage as a forum.