Comedy of Manners

Comedy of Manners PDF Author: David L. Hirst
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351629905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
First published in 1979, this book traces comedy of manners from the 1660s to the then present — a scope beyond the traditional focus on the Restoration and early twentieth century. It uncovers an underestimated subversive potential and socially critical force in this particularly English dramatic form, emphasising the distinctive subjects and style that distinguish it from more general forms of witty social satire. The author discusses the major comic dramatists of the post-Restoration period; reassesses the significance of Sheridan, Wilde and Coward; and examines the continuation of the tradition in modern writers. This book will be of interest to students of English literature and drama.

Comedy of Manners

Comedy of Manners PDF Author: David L. Hirst
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351629905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
First published in 1979, this book traces comedy of manners from the 1660s to the then present — a scope beyond the traditional focus on the Restoration and early twentieth century. It uncovers an underestimated subversive potential and socially critical force in this particularly English dramatic form, emphasising the distinctive subjects and style that distinguish it from more general forms of witty social satire. The author discusses the major comic dramatists of the post-Restoration period; reassesses the significance of Sheridan, Wilde and Coward; and examines the continuation of the tradition in modern writers. This book will be of interest to students of English literature and drama.

The Comedy of the Eighteenth Century

The Comedy of the Eighteenth Century PDF Author:
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Distri
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description


A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, 1700-1750

A History of Early Eighteenth Century Drama, 1700-1750 PDF Author: Allardyce Nicoll
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description


The Comedy of Manners from Sheridan to Maugham

The Comedy of Manners from Sheridan to Maugham PDF Author: Newell W. Sawyer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512806560
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
In the two centuries between the first performance of The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan and the outbreak of the First World War, the stage provided an accurate mirror of the changing mores of English society. "High comedy," Newell W. Sawyer writes, "views man as a social animal in the midst of his fellows, with customs, conventions, and traditions of his own devising, and prods him gently or mockingly, as he stands confounded by that which he has made." The comedy of manners became, from its prototype, a dramatic category reflecting the life, thought, and manners of upper-class society, faithful to its traditions and philosophy, and as such offers an ideal medium for such a study as Professor Sawyer has here undertaken. The result is a book that is at once entertaining and serious, a study of two centuries of the British stage,

Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English

Manners, Norms and Transgressions in the History of English PDF Author: Andreas H. Jucker
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260826
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This volume traces the multifaceted concept of manners in the history of English from the late medieval through the early and late modern periods right up to the present day. It focuses in particular on transgressions of manners and norms of behaviour as an analytical tool to shed light on the discourse of polite conduct and styles of writing. The papers collected in this volume adopt both literary and linguistic perspectives. The fictional sources range from medieval romances and Shakespearean plays to eighteenth-century drama, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and present-day television comedy drama. The non-fictional data includes conduct books, medical debates and petitions written by lower class women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The contributions focus in particular on the following questions: What are the social and political ideologies behind rules of etiquette and norms of interaction, and what can we learn from blunders and other transgressions?

Eighteenth Century English Literature and Its Cultural Background

Eighteenth Century English Literature and Its Cultural Background PDF Author: James Edward Tobin
Publisher: Biblo & Tannen Publishers
ISBN: 9780819601889
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description


A Study Guide for Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals"

A Study Guide for Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Author: Gale, Cengage Learning
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
ISBN: 1410356809
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
A Study Guide for Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

The School for Scandal

The School for Scandal PDF Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description


Character's Theater

Character's Theater PDF Author: Lisa A. Freeman
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201949
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
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.

The Contrast

The Contrast PDF Author: Cynthia A. Kierner
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814783430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
“The Contrast“, which premiered at New York City's John Street Theater in 1787, was the first American play performed in public by a professional theater company. The play, written by New England-born, Harvard-educated, Royall Tyler was timely, funny, and extremely popular. When the play appeared in print in 1790, George Washington himself appeared at the head of its list of hundreds of subscribers. Reprinted here with annotated footnotes by historian Cynthia A. Kierner, Tyler’s play explores the debate over manners, morals, and cultural authority in the decades following American Revolution. Did the American colonists' rejection of monarchy in 1776 mean they should abolish all European social traditions and hierarchies? What sorts of etiquette, amusements, and fashions were appropriate and beneficial? Most important, to be a nation, did Americans need to distinguish themselves from Europeans—and, if so, how? Tyler was not the only American pondering these questions, and Kierner situates the play in its broader historical and cultural contexts. An extensive introduction provides readers with a background on life and politics in the United States in 1787, when Americans were in the midst of nation-building. The book also features a section with selections from contemporary letters, essays, novels, conduct books, and public documents, which debate issues of the era.