The Visual Life of Romantic Theater, 1780-1830

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-472-13288-1
Verlag: University of Michigan Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

The Visual Life of Romantic Theater examines the dynamism and vibrancy of stage spectacle and its impact in an era of momentous social upheaval and aesthetic change. Situating theatrical production as key to understanding visuality ca. 1780-1830, this book places the stage front and center in Romantic scholarship—a field in a period long defined by its focus on poetic poetry—by reenvisioning traditional approaches to artistic and social production. How, it asks, did dramaturgy and stagecraft influence aesthetic and sociopolitical concerns? How does a focus on visuality expand our understanding of the historical experience of theatergoing? In what ways did stage performance converge with visual culture beyond the theater? How did extra-theatrical genres engage with theatrical sight and spectacle? Finally, how does a focus on dramatic vision change the way we conceive of Romanticism itself? The volume’s essays by emerging and established scholars provide exciting and suggestive answers to these questions, along with a capacious conception of Romantic theater as a locus of visual culture that reached well beyond playhouse walls.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theater: Technik, Bühnentechnik, Einrichtung
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Romanticism, Visuality, and the Theater
Diane Piccitto and Terry F. Robinson
 
I. Imagined Scenes
 
1. The 1794 Macbeth and Its Conjuring Effects: Rethinking Romantic-Era Spectatorship
Terry F. Robinson
 
2. “Mind-forg’d Manacles”: The Scenography of the Romantic Prison
Joseph Roach
 
3. Some Versions of Spectacle: Worldmaking and the Regency Toy Theater
Daniel O’Quinn
 
4. Conjuring the Space and the Right to Appear in Obi; or Three-Fingered Jack (1800)
Dana Van Kooy
 
II. Spectacular Bodies
 
5. “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind”: Visualizing Othello in Nineteenth-Century British Theater
Atsede Makonnen
 
6. Playing “Alive”: Performing Sculpture on the Romantic Stage
Sophie Thomas
 
7. “Dresses in Hand”: Mary Rein’s Costume Workshop and the Spectacle of Romantic Theater
Susan E. Brown
 
8. The Singing Cat: British Audiences, Angelica Catalani, and the Threat of Opera
Uri Erman
 
III. Performances in Print
 
9. The Stage in a Page: A Visual Life of Romantic Playbills
Michael Gamer
 
10. Between Media: Harlequinade’s and Melodrama’s Visuality in Print
Deven M. Parker
 
11. Robert Blemmell Schnebbelie, Londina Illustrata, and the Visual Life of Regency Theater
Gillian Russell
 
12. Staging Satire: Gillray and “Caricatura-Sublime”
Heather Mcpherson
 
13. Theatrical Spectatorship in Byron’s Cain and Blake’s The Ghost of Abel: From Oblivion to Redemption
Diane Piccitto
 
Afterword: Romanticism is Seeing Ghosts
Jonathan Mulrooney
 
Contributors