106-455 Eighteenth-Century Performance: Spectacle, Sexuality and the Emergence of Modern Popular Culture

Credit Points:

Coordinator:

Timetable:

Contact:

Subject Description:

This subject is an introduction to contemporary work in performance theory as well as to one of the liveliest areas of eighteenth-century British culture. It aims to explore the emergence of the modern culture of spectacle and of modern entertainment industries as well as an important moment in the history of the high/low culture divide through the category of performance. Performances examined will include legitimate drama, ballad operas, pantomimes, magic shows and the phantasmagoria. A sense of the transformations in British forms of nationalism, sexuality and identity through the eighteenth-century will provide a background for the subject. It will also analyse the role of performance in the secularisation of the culture and in the construction of the enlightened public sphere. Students who complete this subject successfully will possess a general understanding of the structure and development of performance in eighteenth-century Britain, be informed on recent critical debates over performance and performance culture and have an understanding of how cultural studies as a set of analytic methods might apply to the history of performance.

Assessment:

Prescribed Texts:

Course reader available from the department.

• J Vanbrugh, The Relapse, A C Black.
• J Gay, The Beggar's Opera, Penguin.
• H Fielding, The Author's Farce, U Nebraska P.
• O Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, Longmans.