LEADER 04732nam 2200781Ia 450 001 9910787520003321 005 20211217000159.0 010 $a0-8122-0194-9 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812201949 035 $a(CKB)2670000000418304 035 $a(EBL)3442186 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000980766 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11533220 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000980766 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10969435 035 $a(PQKB)10556847 035 $a(OCoLC)606607593 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse26830 035 $a(DE-B1597)449049 035 $a(OCoLC)1013946934 035 $a(OCoLC)1037980640 035 $a(OCoLC)1041996694 035 $a(OCoLC)1046611396 035 $a(OCoLC)1047004020 035 $a(OCoLC)1049684915 035 $a(OCoLC)1054879651 035 $a(OCoLC)979954170 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812201949 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3442186 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10748618 035 $a(iGPub)CSPLUS0003691 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3442186 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000418304 100 $a20010703d2002 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurnn#---|u||u 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aCharacter's theater$b[electronic resource] $egenre and identity on the eighteenth-century English stage /$fLisa A. Freeman 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2002 215 $a1 online resource (312 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 0 $a0-8122-3639-4 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [275]-290) and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tIntroduction: A Prologue --$tChapter One. Staged Identities --$tChapter Two. Plays About Plays --$tChapter Three. Tragedy's Tragic Flaw --$tChapter Four. Constituting Parodies of Identity --$tChapter Five. Sentimental Comedy: Or, The Comedy of Good Breeding --$tEpilogue --$tNotes --$tBibliography --$tIndex --$tAcknowledgments 330 $aIf the whole world acted the player, how did the player act the world? In Character's Theater, Lisa A. Freeman uses this question to test recent critical discussion of eighteenth-century literature and culture. Much current work, she observes, focuses on the concept of theatricality as both the governing metaphor of social life and a primary filter of psychic perception. Hume's "theater of the mind," Adam Smith's "impartial spectator," and Diderot's "tableaux" are all invoked by theorists to describe a process whereby the private individual comes to internalize theatrical logic and apprehend the self as other. To them theatricality is a critical mechanism of modern subjectivity but one that needs to be concealed if the subject's stability is to be maintained. Finding that much of this discussion about the "Age of the Spectator" has been conducted without reference to the play texts or actual theatrical practice, Freeman turns to drama and discovers a dynamic model of identity based on eighteenth-century conceptualizations of character. In contrast to the novel, which cultivated psychological tensions between private interiority and public show, dramatic characters in the eighteenth century experienced no private thoughts. The theater of the eighteenth century was not a theater of absorption but rather a theater of interaction, where what was monitored was not the depth of character, as in the novel, but the arc of a genre over the course of a series of discontinuous acts. In a genre-by-genre analysis of plays about plays, tragedy, comedies of manners, humours, and intrigue, and sentimental comedy, Freeman offers an interpretive account of eighteenth-century drama and its cultural work and demonstrates that by deploying an alternative model of identity, theater marked a site of resistance to the rise of the subject and to the ideological conformity enforced through that identity formation. 606 $aEnglish drama$y18th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aCharacters and characteristics in literature 606 $aIdentity (Psychology) in literature 606 $aGroup identity in literature 606 $aLiterary form 610 $aCultural Studies. 610 $aLiterature. 615 0$aEnglish drama$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aCharacters and characteristics in literature. 615 0$aIdentity (Psychology) in literature. 615 0$aGroup identity in literature. 615 0$aLiterary form. 676 $a822/.50927 700 $aFreeman$b Lisa A$01039980 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910787520003321 996 $aCharacter's theater$93697093 997 $aUNINA