Michael Ragussis re-reads the novelistic tradition by arguing the acts of naming--bestowing, revealing, or earning a name; taking away, hiding, or prohibiting a name; slandering, or protecting and serving it--lie at the center of fictional plots from the 18th century to the present. Against the background of philosophic approaches to naming, Acts of Naming reveals the ways in which systems of naming are used to appropriate characters in novels as diverse as Clarissa, Fanny Hill, Oliver Twist, Pierre, Tess of the d'Urbervilles,...
Michael Ragussis re-reads the novelistic tradition by arguing the acts of naming--bestowing, revealing, or earning a name; taking away, hiding, or pro...
"I knew a Man, who having nothing but a summary Notion of Religion himself, and being wicked and profligate to the last Degree in his Life, made a thorough Reformation in himself, by labouring to convert a "Jew."" --Daniel Defoe, "The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1719)
When the hero of Defoe's novel listens skeptically to this anecdote related by a French Roman Catholic priest, he little suspects that in less than a century the conversion of the Jews would become nothing short of a national project--not in France but in England. In this book, Michael Ragussis explores the...
"I knew a Man, who having nothing but a summary Notion of Religion himself, and being wicked and profligate to the last Degree in his Life, made a tho...
Perhaps the most significant development of the Georgian theater was its multiplication of ethnic, colonial, and provincial character types parading across the stage. In "Theatrical Nation," Michael Ragussis opens up an archive of neglected plays and performances to examine how this flood of domestic and colonial others showcased England in general and London in particular as the center of an increasingly complex and culturally mixed nation and empire, and in this way illuminated the shifting identity of a newly configured Great Britain.
In asking what kinds of ideological work these...
Perhaps the most significant development of the Georgian theater was its multiplication of ethnic, colonial, and provincial character types paradin...
