Home - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The Public’s Open to Us All: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century England
Editor: Laura Engel
Date Of Publication: Feb 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0173-7
Isbn: 1-4438-0173-9
“The Public’s Open to Us All”: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century England considers the relationship between British women and various modes of performance in the long eighteenth century. From the moment Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, the question of women’s status in the public world became the focus of cultural attention both on and off the stage. In addition to the appearance of the first actresses during this period female playwrights, novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, theatrical managers and entrepreneurs emerged as skillful and often demanding professionals. In this variety of new roles, eighteenth-century women redefined shifting notions of femininity by challenging traditional representations of female subjectivity and contributing to the shaping of eighteenth-century society’s attitudes, tastes, and cultural imagination. Recent scholarship in eighteenth-century studies reflects a heightened interest in fame, the rise of celebrity culture, and new ways of understanding women’s participation as both private individuals and public professionals. What is unique to the body of essays presented here is the authors’ focus on performance as a means of thinking about the ways in which women occupied, negotiated, re-imagined, and challenged the world outside of the traditional domestic realm. The authors employ a range of historical, literary, and theoretical approaches to the connections among women and performance, and in doing so make significant contributions to the fields of eighteenth-century literary and cultural studies, theatre history, gender studies, and performance studies.

Laura Engel is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Recent publications include articles on actresses and celebrity culture in Macbeth: New Critical Essays, ed. Nick Moschovakis (Routledge, 2008), Eighteenth-Century Women, Volume V, and The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions, ed. Glen Colburn (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). She is currently working on a book length study entitled Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making.

"'The Public’s Open to Us All: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century’ England' is a valuable resource for scholars and students interested in women studies, performance studies, and British drama. By illuminating the careers of eighteenth-century actresses, authors, and managers, and analyzing modern performances of eighteenth-century works, the essays in this collection reaffirm the importance of eighteenth-century theatre and performance in contemporary culture.”

Marilyn Francus, Associate Professor, Department of English, West Virginia University

Price Uk Gbp: 44.99
Price Us Usd: 67.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)

We recommend

Linguistics
Applying Language Science to Language Pedagogy: Contributions of Linguistics and Psycholinguistics to Second Language Teaching

Women's Studies
Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists

History
The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations

Interesting reviews

From Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia

''Stratton offers important critiques of the function of racism in everyday relations in Australia. In so doing, he canvasses an impressive array of sites and theories, inviting the reader into significant debates and urging them to appreciate the magnitude of these urgent ethical issues and their fundamental relationship to the workings of capital. More than a snapshot of a specific political landscape, however, Uncertain Lives provides a way into key theoretical debates circulating in the first decade of the 2000s, weaving complex theory into grounded debates. These critical interventions highlight the continuity current policy and law has with historical forms of racism and exclusion in Australia. As such, the insights developed in this book bring to the forefront the urgent need for our politicians to reflect upon the ethics of our policy positions. While the book is brought together by the overriding concerns of race, culture and neoliberalism, each chapter also makes sense on its own, making it an ideal choice for inclusion on University courses concerned with the nexus of politics and race, immigration and exclusion, neoliberalism and punishment, or popular culture and racism.''
- Elaine Kelly, 'Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies', (March 2013).

“For thirty years, Jon Stratton has been the sharpest, most acute observer of cultural phenomena around. This latest collection of his investigations into the racial contours of Australian neoliberalism is further testimony to the extraordinary contribution he has made to cultural studies around the globe.”
– Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside, USA; author of The Well-Tempered Self (1993), Technologies Of Truth (1998), Cultural Citizenship (2007) and Makeover Nation (2008)

“In a context of global crises – political, economic and social – Stratton’s book stages a series of compelling interventions that clarify the origins of these crises and their impact on the lives of both citizens and socially designated ‘others.’ At once analytical and impassioned, this is a landmark book offering a rigorous and inspired account of the destructive ways in which neoliberalism has critically transformed Australian society and culture.”
– Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; author of Biometerics (2010); editor of Transmediterranean (2010)