Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage

Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage
Author :
Publisher : SIU Press
Total Pages : 302
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0809324628
ISBN-13 : 9780809324620
Rating : 4/5 (28 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage by : Cynthia Lowenthal

Download or read book Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage written by Cynthia Lowenthal and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage, Cynthia Lowenthal explores identity--especially masculinity and femininity, English and "foreign," middle-class and aristocratic--as it is enacted, idealized, deployed, and redefined on the late-seventeenth-century British stage. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways the theatre contributed to new and often shifting early modern definitions of the boundaries of nation, status, and gender. The first portion of the book focuses on the playwrights' presentations of idealized men and the comic ridicule of male bodies and behaviors that fall short of the ideal. Of special interest are those moments when playwrights use stereotypes of national character, particularly the Spaniards and Turks, as examples of the worst in male behavior, judgments that are always inflected with elements of class or status inconsistency. The second portion of Lowenthal's discussion focuses on playwrights' attempts to redefine the idealized woman. Lowenthal investigates the ways that an extratheatrical discourse surrounding the actresses, one that essentialized them as sexual bodies demanding scrutiny and requiring containment, also serves to secure for them an equally essential aristocratic status. Anchored by Manley's Royal Mischief, Lowenthal's reading reveals that even a woman playwright's attempts to represent female subjectivity or interiority at odds with the surfaces of the body are doomed to return to those same surfaces. By focusing on a new, early modern lability of identity and by reading less canonical women playwrights, such as Manley and Pix, alongside established male playwrights such as Dryden and Wycherley, Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage yields both a more accurate and a more compelling picture of the cultural dynamics at work on the early modern stage.


Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage Related Books

Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage
Language: en
Pages: 302
Authors: Cynthia Lowenthal
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003 - Publisher: SIU Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage, Cynthia Lowenthal explores identity--especially masculinity and femininity, English and "foreign," middle-cla
The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell
Language: en
Pages: 439
Authors: Rebecca Herissone
Categories: Music
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-04-01 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell provides a comprehensive and authoritative review of current research into Purcell and the environment of Restor
Theatre and Culture in Early Modern England, 1650-1737
Language: en
Pages: 189
Authors: Catie Gill
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-03-02 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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
Ritual Design for the Ballet Stage
Language: en
Pages: 548
Authors: Hanna Walsdorf
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-02-28 - Publisher: Frank & Timme GmbH

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Turkish ceremony in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme has been popular with audiences for almost 350 years and remains one of the bestknown scenes of early modern Fr
Genre in English Literature, 1650-1700: Transitions in Drama and Fiction
Language: en
Pages: 322
Authors: Pilar Cuder-Dominguez
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-09-26 - Publisher: Cambria Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines the theories and practices of narrative and drama in England between 1650 and 1700, a period that, in bridging the Renaissance and the Enligh