Theater enough : American culture and the metaphor of the world stage, 1607-1789 / Jeffrey H. Richards.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Richards, Jeffrey H.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Revolutionary period, 1775-1783--History and criticism.

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Colonies in literature.

Theater in literature.

Metaphor.

English-speaking countries--Intellectual life--18th century.

English-speaking countries.

English-speaking countries--Intellectual life--17th century.

United States--Civilization--To 1783.

United States.

America--In literature.

America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (361 p.)

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 1991.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The early settlers in America had a special relationship to the theater. Though largely without a theater of their own, they developed an ideology of theater that expressed their sense of history, as well as their version of life in the New World. Theater Enough provides an innovative analysis of early American culture by examining the rhetorical shaping of the experience of settlement in the new land through the metaphor of theater.The rhetoric, or discourse, of early American theater emerged out of the figures of speech that permeated the colonists’ lives and literary productions. Jeffrey H. Richards examines a variety of texts—histories, diaries, letters, journals, poems, sermons, political tracts, trial transcripts, orations, and plays—and looks at the writings of such authors as John Winthrop and Mercy Otis Warren. Richards places the American usage of theatrum mundi—the world depicted as a stage—in the context of classical and Renaissance traditions, but shows how the trope functions in American rhetoric as a register for religious, political, and historical attitudes.

Contents:

Preface: Toward a theatrics of culture

Prologue: Democratic spectacles: Medium, message, and metaphor

A theater of the world, to 1630. Politics, history, and theatrum mundi: some early formulations. American origins I: a theater of theaters. American origins II: a theater against theaters. Prospero in Virginia: the example of Captain John Smith

The theater of faith, 1630-1730. A theater on a hill: Puritans and the rhetoric of performance. Playing the (trans)script: the antinomian crisis. Theatrou Mestoi: the example of Cotton Mather

The theater of action, 1676-1776. The field or the stage: democracy, theater, and Anglo-American culture. Theater of blood: the rituals of Republican revolution. Providential actor: the example of John Adams

The theater of glory, 1776-1789. A theater just erected: America at war. Play and earnest on the postwar stage. Stage metaphor and the New Republic

Epilogue: Instant theater.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-323) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822378228

0822378221

OCLC:

896833679