Author: Elizabeth Howe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521422109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This book describes how and why women were permitted to act on the public stage after 1660 in England.
Author: Gillian Perry
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781855144118
Category : Actresses
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Featuring a range of large-scale, public and more intimate portraits of actresses, The First Actresses provides a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality from Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Ranging from oil paint to porcelain, these portraits illustrate the enduring popularity of portraits of women performers. Crucially the book seeks to reassess the traditional association between actress and'prostitute', and the moral ambiguity of women playing male roles. Portraiture became an important vehicle for the expression of concerns about female sexuality, social status, decorum, gender and celebrity. The authors also chart the commercialisation of the spectacle of the actress, as well as the connections between the eighteenth-century 'star system' and modern celebrity culture. Organised thematically, sections include: 'Painting Acresses' Lives', 'Nell Gwyn and Covent Garden Goddesses', 'Divas, Dancing and the Rage for Music: Painting Women in Musical Performance', 'Beauty, Ageing and the Body Politic of the Eighteenth-Century Actress' and 'Star Systems'. Illustrated with remarkable paintings by major artists of the period, a fascinating and lucid text reveals the many ways in which women performers enabled artistic innovation and creativity, provoked intellectual debate and contributed to the popularity and visibility of the theatre. Accompanies an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 20 October 2011 - 8 January 2012
Author: Katherine M. Quinsey
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159997
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
This volume of twelve original essays is the first comprehensive study of feminist issues in Restoration drama. The late seventeenth century marks a pivotal era in the history of feminism, when Renaissance assumptions about gender and patriarchy were being directly challenged. For the first time, women appeared onstage as actresses, made their presence felt as spectators and patrons, and wrote a number of the plays produced in theaters. In an unusually direct and probing way, drama of the Restoration period raised radical questions about the place of women in the family and in society, and about the essential nature of men and women. The essays examine feminist issues from a variety of historical and theoretical approaches across a spectrum of plays—comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and heroic drama. By addressing the acute questions of gender raised in the drama, Broken Boundaries presents a vivid portrait of the uncertainties and changing perceptions in all areas of intellectual, political, and social life during the last decades of the seventeenth century.
Author: Priya Parmar
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439171181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
From the critically acclaimed author of Vanessa and Her Sister, the debut novel hailed by New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory as “a vivid imagining of the restoration London of Charles II with Nell Gwynn as a powerful and engaging heroine.” While selling oranges in the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, sweet and sprightly Ellen "Nell" Gwyn impresses the theater’s proprietors with a wit and sparkle that belie her youth and poverty. She quickly earns a place in the company, narrowly avoiding the life of prostitution to which her sister has already succumbed. As her roles evolve from supporting to starring, the scope of her life broadens as well. Soon Ellen is dressed in the finest fashions, charming the theatrical, literary, and royal luminaries of Restoration England. Ellen grows up on the stage, experiencing first love and heartbreak and eventually becoming the mistress of Charles II. Despite his reputation as a libertine, Ellen wholly captures his heart—and he hers—but even the most powerful love isn’t enough to stave off the gossip and bitter court politics that accompany a royal romance. Telling the story through a collection of vibrant seventeenth-century voices ranging from Ellen’s diary to playbills, letters, gossip columns, and home remedies, Priya Parmar brings to life the story of an endearing and delightful heroine.
Author: April De Angelis
Publisher: Samuel French Limited
ISBN: 9780573130076
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 67
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Book Description
Author: Kirsten Pullen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521541022
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Publisher Description
Author: Susan J. Owen
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9781405176101
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
This Companion illustrates the vitality and diversity of dramatic work 1660 to 1710. Twenty-five essays by leading scholars in the field bring together the best recent insights into the full range of dramatic practice and innovation at the time. Introduces readers to the recent boom in scholarship that has revitalised Restoration drama Explores historical and cultural contexts, genres of Restoration drama, and key dramatists, among them Dryden and Behn
Author: Deborah Payne Fisk
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820337897
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
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.
Author: Julia Swindells
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0199600309
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 786
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre 1737-1832 provides a comprehensive guide to theatre of the Georgian era across the range of dramatic forms.
Author: Derek Hughes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826948
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Traditionally known as the first professional woman writer in English, Aphra Behn has now emerged as one of the major figures of the Restoration. She provided more plays for the stage than any other author and greatly influenced the development of the novel with her ground-breaking fiction, especially Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister and Oroonoko, the first English novel set in America. Behn's work straddles the genres: beside drama and fiction, she also excelled in poetry and she made several important translations from French libertine and scientific works. This Companion discusses and introduces her writings in all these fields and provides the critical tools with which to judge their aesthetic and historical importance. It also includes a full bibliography, a detailed chronology and a description of the known facts of her life. The Companion will be an essential tool for the study of this increasingly important writer and thinker.
