Private theatricals : the lives of the Victorians / Nina Auerbach.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Auerbach, Nina, 1943-2017, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Theater.

English drama--19th century--History and criticism.

English drama.

Illusion in literature.

Role playing in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

Reprint 2014

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2014]

Summary:

"Everyman" as actor on life's stage has been a recurrent theme in popular literature--epecially persuasive in these times of powerful electronic media, celebrity hype, and professional image-makers--but the great Victorians exuded sincerity. Nina Auerbach reminds us that all lives can be subversive performances. Charting the notable impact of the theater and theatricality on the Victorian imagination, she provocatively reexamines the concept of sincerity and authenticity as literary ideal. In novels, popular fiction, and biographies, Auerbach unveils the theatrical element in lives imagined and represented. Focusing on three major points in the life cycle--childhood, passage to maturity, and death--she demonstrates how the process of living was for Victorians the acting of a role; only dying generated a creature with an "own self." Her discussion draws not only on theater history, but on demonology-the ghosts and monsters so much a part of the nineteenth-century imagination. Nina Auerbach has written a closely reasoned and stimulating book for everyone interested in the Victorian age, and everyone interested in theatricality---whether private or on the stage.

Contents:

Frontmatter

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

Introduction: Trees and Transfigurations

I. Little Actors

II. Patterns of Conversion

III. Death Scenes

EPILOGUE Theatrical Fears

NOTES

ILLUSTRATION SOURCES

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

0-674-41889-1

OCLC:

1024032578