1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910495958403321

Autore

Litvak Joseph

Titolo

Caught in the act : theatricality in the nineteenth-century English novel / / Joseph Litvak

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [1992]

©1992

ISBN

0-520-91137-7

0-585-16123-2

Edizione

[Reprint 2019]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 283 pages)

Disciplina

823/.809357

Soggetti

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Performing arts in literature

Theater in literature

Actors in literature

Acting in literature

English

Languages & Literatures

English Literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di contenuto

Infection of acting : theatricals and theatricality in Mansfield Park -- Governess as actress : the inscription of theatricality in Jane Eyre -- Scenes of writing, scenes of instruction : authority and subversion in Villette -- Dickens and sensationalism -- Poetry and theatricality in Daniel Deronda -- Making a scene : Henry James's theater of embarrassment -- Actress, monster, novelist : figuration and counterplot in The Tragic muse.

Sommario/riassunto

Litvak demonstrates that private experience in the novels of Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Eliot, and James is a rigorous enactment of a public script that constructs normative gender and class identities. He suggests that the theatricality which pervades these novels enforces social norms while introducing opportunities for novelists to resist them. This approach encourages a rethinking of the genre and its



cultural contexts in all their instability and ambivalence.