Staging Masculinities: History, Gender, Performance

ISBN-13: 9780333720196 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 276 str.

Michael Mangan

Opis

Staging Masculinities is a critical history of the ways in which changing concepts of masculinity have been represented, explored, and critiqued on mainstream Western-and particularly English-stages. The study analyzes a wide variety of plays and performances, ranging from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits, from Henry V to Oleanna, tracing a complex relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.

Spis treści

Preface and Acknowledgements.- Staging Masculinities: Introduction and Orientation.- Staging Medieval Masculinities.- Sighing Like a Furnace and Full of Strange Oaths: Lovers and Soldiers in Shakespeare.- The Spectacle of Masculinity in the Restoration Theatre.- Outlaws and Sentiment: Masculinities in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre.- Doll's Houses and Wendy Houses: Masculinities on Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Stages.- Contemporary Masculinities.- Bibliography.- Index.

O autorze

MICHAEL MANGAN is Professor of Drama at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He has published books and articles on various aspects of drama, and has worked as a playwright and director.

Blurb

One man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages', asserts Shakespeare's Jacques, in a speech which foreshadows what has become a commonplace of contemporary gender theory: that masculinity, far from being a secure, unproblematic gender identity, is a site of crisis and contradictions.

Staging Masculinities engages with the complex and paradoxical history of masculinities by exploring the ways in which changing concepts of what it means 'to be a man' have been represented, celebrated, examined and critiqued on mainstream Western - and particularly English - stages. Mapping a history of masculinities onto a history of theatre, Michael Mangan analyses a wide range of plays and performances, from Henry V to Peter Pan, and from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits. In the process Mangan offers new and gendered readings of several familiar plays, and traces an intricate relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.