18th- and 19th- Century American Drama

18th- and 19th- Century American Drama
Author: Robert Allan Gates
Publisher: Ardent Media
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1984
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780829011517

The Battle of Bunkers-Hill (Hugh Henry Brackenridge); The Contrast (Royall Tyler); Andre (William Dunlap); Superstition (James Nelson Barker); The Octoroon (Dion Doucicault); and Shore Acres (James A Herne).

A Companion to American Literature

A Companion to American Literature
Author: Susan Belasco
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1864
Release: 2020-04-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1119653355

A comprehensive, chronological overview of American literature in three scholarly and authoritative volumes A Companion to American Literature traces the history and development of American literature from its early origins in Native American oral tradition to 21st century digital literature. This comprehensive three-volume set brings together contributions from a diverse international team of accomplished young scholars and established figures in the field. Contributors explore a broad range of topics in historical, cultural, political, geographic, and technological contexts, engaging the work of both well-known and non-canonical writers of every period. Volume One is an inclusive and geographically expansive examination of early American literature, applying a range of cultural and historical approaches and theoretical models to a dramatically expanded canon of texts. Volume Two covers American literature between 1820 and 1914, focusing on the development of print culture and the literary marketplace, the emergence of various literary movements, and the impact of social and historical events on writers and writings of the period. Spanning the 20th and early 21st centuries, Volume Three studies traditional areas of American literature as well as the literature from previously marginalized groups and contemporary writers often overlooked by scholars. This inclusive and comprehensive study of American literature: Examines the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and disability on American literature Discusses the role of technology in book production and circulation, the rise of literacy, and changing reading practices and literary forms Explores a wide range of writings in multiple genres, including novels, short stories, dramas, and a variety of poetic forms, as well as autobiographies, essays, lectures, diaries, journals, letters, sermons, histories, and graphic narratives. Provides a thematic index that groups chapters by contexts and illustrates their links across different traditional chronological boundaries A Companion to American Literature is a valuable resource for students coming to the subject for the first time or preparing for field examinations, instructors in American literature courses, and scholars with more specialized interests in specific authors, genres, movements, or periods.

Century of Innovation

Century of Innovation
Author: Oscar Gross Brockett
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Total Pages: 552
Release: 1991
Genre: Art
ISBN:

The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain

The Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Spain
Author: David Thatcher Gies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 1994-08-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0521380464

This is the first comprehensive study of the theatre of nineteenth-century Spain, a most important genre which produced more than 10,000 plays during the course of the century. David Gies assesses this mass of material - much of it hitherto unknown - as text, spectacle, and social phenomenon. His book sheds light on political drama during Napoleonic times, the theatre of dictatorship (1820s), Romanticism, women dramatists, socialist drama, neo-Romantic drama, the relationship between parody and the dominant literary currents of the day, and the challenging work of Galdós. A chapter on the battle to create a National Theatre reveals the deep conflicts generated by the various interested factions in the middle of the century. This readable account will at last allow students and scholars properly to re-evaluate the canon of texts.

Entertaining the Nation

Entertaining the Nation
Author: Tice L. Miller
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007-10-25
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780809327782

In this survey of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American drama, Tice L. Miller examines American plays written before a canon was established in American dramatic literature and provides analyses central to the culture that produced them. Entertaining the Nation: American Drama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries evaluates plays in the early years of the republic, reveals shifts in taste from the classical to the contemporary in the 1840s and 1850s, and considers the increasing influence of realism at the end of the nineteenth century. Miller explores the relationship between American drama and societal issues during this period. While never completely shedding its English roots, says Miller, the American drama addressed issues important on this side of the Atlantic such as egalitarianism, republicanism, immigration, slavery, the West, Wall Street, and the Civil War. In considering the theme of egalitarianism, the volume notes Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation in 1831 that equality was more important to Americans than liberty. Also addressed is the Yankee character, which became a staple in American comedy for much of the nineteenth century. Miller analyzes several English plays and notes how David Garrick’s reforms in London were carried over to the colonies. Garrick faced an increasingly middle-class public, offers Miller, and had to make adjustments to plays and to his repertory to draw an audience. The volumealso looks at the shift in drama that paralleled the one in political power from the aristocrats who founded the nation to Jacksonian democrats. Miller traces how the proliferation of newspapers developed a demand for plays that reflected contemporary society and details how playwrights scrambled to put those symbols of the outside world on stage to appeal to the public. Steamships and trains, slavery and adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and French influences are presented as popular subjects during that time. Entertaining the Nation effectively outlines the civilizing force of drama in the establishment and development of the nation, ameliorating differences among the various theatergoing classes, and provides a microcosm of the changes on and off the stage in America during these two centuries.

Nineteenth Century American Plays

Nineteenth Century American Plays
Author: Myron Matlaw
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2001
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781557834645

(Applause Books). Seven hits that have been the staples of the American dramatic repertoire. Myron Matlaw's introduction provides a splendid survey of the development of American drama. Individual prefaces focus each work in the perspective of its historical context.

Music for the Melodramatic Theatre in Nineteenth-Century London and New York

Music for the Melodramatic Theatre in Nineteenth-Century London and New York
Author: Michael V. Pisani
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2014-06-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1609382307

Throughout the nineteenth century, people heard more music in the theatre—accompanying popular dramas such as Frankenstein, Oliver Twist, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Lady Audley’s Secret, The Corsican Brothers, The Three Musketeers, as well as historical romances by Shakespeare and Schiller—than they did in almost any other area of their lives. But unlike film music, theatrical music has received very little attention from scholars and so it has been largely lost to us. In this groundbreaking study, Michael V. Pisani goes in search of these abandoned sounds. Mining old manuscripts and newspapers, he finds that starting in the 1790s, theatrical managers in Britain and the United States began to rely on music to play an interpretive role in melodramatic productions. During the nineteenth century, instrumental music—in addition to song—was a common feature in the production of stage plays. The music played by instrumental ensembles not only enlivened performances but also served other important functions. Many actors and actresses found that accompanimental music helped them sustain the emotional pitch of a monologue or dialogue sequence. Music also helped audiences to identify the motivations of characters. Playwrights used music to hold together the hybrid elements of melodrama, heighten the build toward sensation, and dignify the tragic pathos of villains and other characters. Music also aided manager-directors by providing cues for lighting and other stage effects. Moreover, in a century of seismic social and economic changes, music could provide a moral compass in an uncertain moral universe. Featuring dozens of musical examples and images of the old theatres, Music for the Melodramatic Theatre charts the progress of the genre from its earliest use in the eighteenth century to the elaborate stage productions of the very early twentieth century.

The African American Theatrical Body

The African American Theatrical Body
Author: Soyica Diggs Colbert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1139503596

Presenting an innovative approach to performance studies and literary history, Soyica Colbert argues for the centrality of black performance traditions to African American literature, including preaching, dancing, blues and gospel, and theatre itself, showing how these performance traditions create the 'performative ground' of African American literary texts. Across a century of literary production using the physical space of the theatre and the discursive space of the page, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, August Wilson and others deploy performances to re-situate black people in time and space. The study examines African American plays past and present, including A Raisin in the Sun, Blues for Mister Charlie and Joe Turner's Come and Gone, demonstrating how African American dramatists stage black performances in their plays as acts of recuperation and restoration, creating sites that have the potential to repair the damage caused by slavery and its aftermath.