PERFORMING RACE AND TORTURE ON THE EARLY MODERN STAGE by Ayanna Thompson ( 9781135908546 )

Item Details

Title:

PERFORMING RACE AND TORTURE ON THE EARLY MODERN STAGE

By:

Format:

Electronic book text

List price:	£39.99
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ISBN 10:

1135908540

ISBN 13:

9781135908546

Publisher:

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

Pub. date:

13 September, 2013

Series:

Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

Pages:

192

Description:

Provides a reading of Restoration plays through a performance theory lens. This book shows that an analysis of the conjoined performances of torture and race not only reveals the early modern interest in the nature of racial identity, but also how race was initially coded in a paradoxical fashion as both essentially fixed and socially constructed.

Synopsis:

Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage provides the first sustained reading of Restoration plays through a performance theory lens. This approach shows that an analysis of the conjoined performances of torture and race not only reveals the early modern interest in the nature of racial identity, but also how race was initially coded in a paradoxical fashion as both essentially fixed and socially constructed. An examination of scenes of torture provides the most effective way to unearth these seemingly contradictory representations of race because depictions of torture often interrogate the incongruous desire to substitute the visible and manipulable materiality of the body for the more illusive performative nature of identity. In turn, Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage challenges the long-standing assumption that early modern conceptions of race were radically different in their fluidity from post-Enlightenment ones by demonstrating how many of the debates we continue to have about the nature of racial identity were engendered by these seventeenth-century performances.

Illustrations:

18 Halftones, black and white

Publication:

Imprint:

Routledge

Returns:

Non-returnable

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