Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France

Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France PDF Author: Thomas Wynn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198895348
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France is the first book-length study of how plays were read in eighteenth-century France and, relatedly, of closet drama: excessive plays that cannot be performed within the playhouse's confines and which thus appeal to the reader's imagination. This period in France was characterized by 'théâtromanie', a craze that encompassed the page as well as the stage. The book's first part surveys the historical context in which plays were read and offers a theoretical model for understanding this practice. The eighteenth-century closet was valued as a privileged site of reading. Although scholars routinely present this room as a place of calm reflection, Thomas Wynn develops a framework (derived in part from queer theory) to argue that it fosters passionate and disruptive pleasures that elude the coercive normativity of the playhouse. To explore the multipositional experience of reading plays in this period, Wynn turns to the journal Mercure de France, whose extensive reviews help us to think about geographies of reading, coercion, and autonomy. The second part examines how dramatists exploited the critical, imaginative, and formal potential of the reading experience. It offers close analysis of several closet plays: comedies depicting the dispute between Jesuits and Jansenists in the 1730s; Hénault's historical drama François II, roi de France (1747); and erotic plays from the end of the period. The study concludes with an account of Rétif de La Bretonne's Le Drame de la vie (1793)—an extreme and arguably unsurpassed example of closet drama. Ultimately, this book shows, closet drama is not failed theatre but rather an indisputable part of the lively, passionate, and combative theatrical culture of eighteenth-century France.

Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France

Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France PDF Author: Thomas Wynn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198895348
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France is the first book-length study of how plays were read in eighteenth-century France and, relatedly, of closet drama: excessive plays that cannot be performed within the playhouse's confines and which thus appeal to the reader's imagination. This period in France was characterized by 'théâtromanie', a craze that encompassed the page as well as the stage. The book's first part surveys the historical context in which plays were read and offers a theoretical model for understanding this practice. The eighteenth-century closet was valued as a privileged site of reading. Although scholars routinely present this room as a place of calm reflection, Thomas Wynn develops a framework (derived in part from queer theory) to argue that it fosters passionate and disruptive pleasures that elude the coercive normativity of the playhouse. To explore the multipositional experience of reading plays in this period, Wynn turns to the journal Mercure de France, whose extensive reviews help us to think about geographies of reading, coercion, and autonomy. The second part examines how dramatists exploited the critical, imaginative, and formal potential of the reading experience. It offers close analysis of several closet plays: comedies depicting the dispute between Jesuits and Jansenists in the 1730s; Hénault's historical drama François II, roi de France (1747); and erotic plays from the end of the period. The study concludes with an account of Rétif de La Bretonne's Le Drame de la vie (1793)—an extreme and arguably unsurpassed example of closet drama. Ultimately, this book shows, closet drama is not failed theatre but rather an indisputable part of the lively, passionate, and combative theatrical culture of eighteenth-century France.

European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century

European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description


The Sentimental Theater of the French Revolution

The Sentimental Theater of the French Revolution PDF Author: Cecilia Feilla
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016300
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Smoothly blending performance theory, literary analysis, and historical insights, Cecilia Feilla explores the mutually dependent discourses of feeling and politics and their impact on the theatre and theatre audiences during the French Revolution. Remarkably, the most frequently performed and popular plays from 1789 to 1799 were not the political action pieces that have been the subject of much literary and historical criticism, but rather sentimental dramas and comedies, many of which originated on the stages of the Old Regime. Feilla suggests that theatre provided an important bridge from affective communities of sentimentality to active political communities of the nation, arguing that the performance of virtue on stage served to foster the passage from private emotion to public virtue and allowed groups such as women, children, and the poor who were excluded from direct political participation to imagine a new and inclusive social and political structure. Providing close readings of texts by, among others, Denis Diderot, Collot d'Herbois, and Voltaire, Feilla maps the ways in which continuities and innovations in the theatre from 1760 to 1800 set the stage for the nineteenth century. Her book revitalizes and enriches our understanding of the significance of sentimental drama, showing that it was central to the way that drama both shaped and was shaped by political culture.

European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century (Classic Reprint)

European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century (Classic Reprint) PDF Author: Harry Kurz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781332718993
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Excerpt from European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century European nations except the Greeks and the Turks. The limits mentioned have been overstepped here and there when it seemed necessary. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Theater, War and Revolution in Eighteenth-century France and Its Empire

Theater, War and Revolution in Eighteenth-century France and Its Empire PDF Author: Logan J. Connors
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781009431248
Category : French drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This is the first study of the relationship between French theater and war at a time of revolution and colonial violence. Drawing together theater and performance studies, literary close-reading, cultural, military and gender history, it provides holistic analysis of theater's engagement with military activity at a time of radical transformation"--

Eighteenth century French drama, 1700-1800

Eighteenth century French drama, 1700-1800 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : un
Pages :

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French Comic Drama from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century

French Comic Drama from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: Geoffrey Brereton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780416807103
Category : Comédie française - Histoire et critique
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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The Eighteenth-century French Novel

The Eighteenth-century French Novel PDF Author: Vivienne Mylne
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719001741
Category : French fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century

European Characters in French Drama of the Eighteenth Century PDF Author: Harry Kurz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780849214677
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Beaumarchais and His Times

Beaumarchais and His Times PDF Author: Louis De Lomenie
Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
ISBN: 9781497820821
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1857 Edition.