Author: William Driver Howarth
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521230131
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 764
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Book Description
This 1997 book covers the period which saw the establishment in France of a centralized official theatre - not only the Comédie-Française (the first 'national' theatre), but an Italian theatre and a state opera; the often subversive independent theatres are also discussed. Nearly 1,000 documents deal with censorship and other aspects of external control, company management, the acting profession, dramatic theory and criticism, theatre architecture, settings and costumes, audience composition and behaviour. Over 120 pictorial documents - architectural drawings, technical engravings, frontispieces, portraits, etc. - provide a visual dimension where relevant. A full linking narrative and a copious bibliography help to make this an important reference work and a valuable research tool.
Author: Judy A. Hayden
Publisher: MHRA
ISBN: 178188885X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
Aphra Behn’s spectacular farce, Emperor of the Moon (1687), so engaged audiences that it was restaged well into the eighteenth century. Her play was largely adapted from Anne Mauduit de Fatouville’s Arlequin, Empereur dans la lune (1684), a commedia dell’arte production by the Comédie-Italienne troupe, a performance which also proved immensely popular with Parisian audiences. Within its witty and amusing three acts, Behn’s play explores a number of contemporary concerns — from commedia dell’arte, to gender and politics, to science and astronomy, including a plurality of worlds, for example — all culminating in the third act’s operatic spectacle. This volume offers a transcription of Behn’s 1687 play with extensive annotations, a critical discussion of Behn’s text, and the first English translation of Fatouville’s eight French and Italian scenes.
Author: Mechele Leon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350135453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, 'the general effect of the theatre is to strengthen the national character to augment the national inclinations, and to give a new energy to all the passions'. During the Enlightenment, the advancement of radical ideas along with the emergence of the bourgeois class contributed to a renewed interest in theatre's efficacy, informed by philosophy yet on behalf of politics. While the 18th century saw a growing desire to define the unique and specific features of a nation's drama, and audiences demanded more realistic portrayals of humanity, theatre is also implicated in this age of revolutions. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Age of Enlightenment examines these intersections, informed by the writings of key 18th-century philosophers. Richly illustrated with 45 images, the ten chapters each take a different theme as their focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.
Author: Clive Barker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521597296
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 108
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Book Description
Provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet to question dramatic assumptions.
Author: Jemma Browne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042977804X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Historically the urban festival served as an occasion for affirming shared convictions and identities in the life of the city. Whether religious or civic in nature, these events provided tangible expressions of social, cultural, political, and religious cohesion, often reaffirming a particular shared ethos within diverse urban landscapes. Architecture has long served as a key aspect of this process exhibiting continuity in the flux of these representations through the parading of elaborate ceremonial floats, the construction of temporary buildings, the ‘dressing’ of existing urban space, the alternative occupations of the everyday, and the construction of new buildings and spaces which then become a part of the background fabric of the city. This book examines how festivals can be used as a lens to examine the relationship between city and citizen and questions whether this is fixed through time, or has been transformed as a response to changes in the modern urban condition. Architecture, Festival and the City looks at the multilayered nature of a diverse selection of festivals and the way they incorporate both orderly (authoritative) and disorderly (subversive) components. The aim is to reveal how the civic nature of urban space is utilised through festival to represent ideas of belonging and identity. Recent political and social gatherings also raise questions about the relationship of these events to ‘ritual’ and whether traditional practices can serve as meaningful references in the twenty-first century.
Author: A. Wilkinson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230286151
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
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Book Description
The French Wars of Religion were more than a battle for outright military victory. They were also a battle for the hearts and minds of the population of France. In this struggle to win over public opinion, often apparently peripheral issues could be engaged to make partisan points. Such was the case with the polemical literature surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Based on major new bibliographic research, this study charts the evolving relationship between Mary and French public opinion.
Author: Elza C. Tiner
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802090826
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
Since the appearance of the first volume in 1979, the Records of Early English Drama (REED) series has made available an accurate and useable transcription of all surviving documentary evidence of dramatic, ceremonial, and minstrel activity in Great Britain up to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Although they are immensely valuable to scholars, the REED volumes sometimes prove difficult for students to use without considerable assistance. With this book, Elza Tiner aims to make the records accessible for classroom use. The contributors to the volume describe the various ways in which students can learn from working with these documents. Divided into five sections, the volume illustrates how specific disciplines can use the Records to provide resources for students including ways to teach the historical documents of early English drama, training students in acting and producing, historical contexts for the interpretation of literature, as well as the study of local history, women's studies, and historical linguistics. As a practical and much needed companion to the REED volumes, Teaching with the Records of Early English Drama will prove invaluable to both students and teachers of Medieval English Drama.
Author: Virginia Scott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139491644
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Focusing on actresses in France during the early modern period, Virginia Scott examines how the stereotype of the actress has been constructed. The study then moves beyond that stereotype to detail the reality of the personal and artistic lives of women on the French stage, from the almost unknown Marie Ferré - who signed a contract for 12 livres a year in 1545 to perform the 'antiquailles de Rome or other histories, moralities, farces, and acrobatics' in the provinces - to the queens of the eighteenth-century Paris stage, whose 'adventures' have overshadowed their artistic triumphs. The book also investigates the ways in which actresses made invaluable contributions to the development of the French theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and looks at the 'afterlives' of such women as Armande Béjart, Marquise Du Parc, Charlotte Desmares, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and Hippolyte Clairon in biographies, plays, and films.
Author: David Wiles
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521193273
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Shaped by political concerns of today, this is an informed but provocative take on theatre history and theatre's social function.
Author: Caroline Wood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317132750
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
From the outset, French opera generated an enormous diversity of literature, familiarity with which greatly enhances our understanding of this unique art form. Yet relatively little of that literature is available in English, despite an upsurge of interest in the Lully-Rameau period during the past two decades. This book presents a wide-ranging and informative picture of the organization and evolution of French Baroque opera, its aims and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on official documents, theoretical writings, letters, diaries, dictionary entries, contemporary reviews and commentaries, it provides an often entertaining insight into Lully’s once-proud Royal Academy of Music and the colourful characters who surrounded it. The translated passages are set in context, and readers are directed to further scholarly and critical writings in English. Readers will find this new, updated edition easier to use with its revised and expanded translations, supplementary explanatory content and new illustrations.
