The Culture of Spectacle
Session Leader
- Dr David Taylor, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Questions
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For Archenholz and Wendeborn, what are the chief characteristics of the London theatre? Specifically what is “English” about it?
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Changes or innovations in exhibition and theatrical culture in the eighteenth century were sometimes met with anxiety or fear. Why was this so?
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Sentimental drama of the eighteenth century is much denigrated. In what ways does Bridget Orr undertake to rehabilitate it ideologically?
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The emergence of the middle class remains a master narrative when thinking about the constitution of a public for theatre and art in the period. What are the problems of such a thesis?
Essential Reading
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John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: HarperCollins, 1997), parts III and IV.
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Johann W. Archenholz, A Picture of England (London: Edward Jeffrey, 1789), vol. 2, ch. 4.
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Frederick Augustus Wendeborn, A View of England towards the close of the Eighteenth Century (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791), vol. 2, chapters on “The State of Arts”, “Painting”, and “The Stage”.
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C. Suzanne Matheson, “Viewing”, in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age, ed. Iain McCalman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
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Shearer West, “Manufacturing Spectacle” and Bridget Orr, “Empire, Sentiment, and Theatre”, in The Oxford Handbook of Georgian Theatre, ed. Julia Swindells and David Francis Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
Images
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William Hogarth, A Scene from “The Beggar’s Opera” (1731) http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-a-scene-from-the-beggars-opera-vi-n02437
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J. H. Ramberg, The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1787 (1787) http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O121797/the-exhibition-of-the-royal-print-martini-pietro-antonio/
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James Gillray, Very Slippy-Weather (1808) http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=38375&objectId=1480045&partId=1
Further Reading
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Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1978)
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Marc Baer, Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)
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John Barrell, ed., Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on British Art 1700-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
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Peter de Bolla, The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape, and Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003)
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Rosie Dias, Exhibiting Englishness: John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and the Formation of a National Aesthetic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)
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John O’Brien, Harlequin Britain: Pantomime and Entertainment, 1690–1760 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004)
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Jane Moody, Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
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Gillian Russell, Theatres of War: Performance, Politics, and Society, 1793-1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)
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David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
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David H. Solkin, ed., Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House, 1780-1836 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
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David Francis Taylor, Theatres of Opposition: Empire, Revolution, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)