A distinctive strategy of remembrance in Irish historical drama is the depiction of a current crisis through allusion to another traumatic passage in the deep or recent past. In this essay we examine ...two relatively neglected Irish plays staged twenty years apart which were produced at key moments of reversal and reflection, and which concentrate on female agency, the cyclical Irish curse of betrayal, anxieties of masculinity, and the clash of morality and law. James Connolly's Under Which Flag? (1916) and Teresa Deevy's The Wild Goose (1936) are exemplary instances of how Irish historical drama approaches crisis and commemoration. In each case, by returning respectively to the Fenian Rising of 1867 and events surrounding the Treaty of Limerick of 1691, Connolly and Deevy are able to argue for the continuity of crisis in ways that avoid the fatalism that characterises less nuanced forms of dwelling on and in the past.
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This essay explores the character of Cerulia in Frances Burney’s dramatic play,
Hubert de Vere
, composed and revised in the 1790s, yet never published or staged in Burney’s lifetime.
Cerulia seems ...to eschew any easy dramatic categorization, as she cannot be identified with the heroine of the play. Undeniably, she is a victim, but of whom/what, we may wonder? Does attempting to define the nature of the
hamartia
of which Cerulia remains victim lead the “ideal” reader/viewer toward either fate/the gods or, rather, social apparatuses? And, finally, what about the eponymous protagonist Hubert de Vere? Is it correct to identify de Vere as the actant “hero”, or perhaps as per the sub-category “villain hero” so popular in late eighteenth-century dramas?
Burney’s adroit exploitation of tropology and literary allusion in
Hubert de Vere
will be at the centre of this essay. In particular, I will examine the last act of the play, where the themes of confinement, imprisonment, and escape take on tragic hues. Though unpublished until 1995, these scenes are among the most vivid and, indeed, the most shocking Burney ever wrote. It is my contention that a long overdue appraisal of female characterisation in
Hubert de Vere
can shed novel light –at once both disturbing and liberating– on Frances Burney’s oeuvre at large.
This article explores historical representations of Liverpool in two television dramas: ITV’s Cilla (2014) and the BBC’s Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). It is concerned with the ways that television ...drama can both record and recreate places from the past. Focussing on two dramas set in Liverpool at formative moments in the city’s past, it considers the centrality of an evocation of place and specifically the space of the city to both series and the ways that television dramas that mobilise such a strong sense place can become intrinsic to the heritage and history of the places they depict.
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The counter-epic is a literary style that developed in reaction to imperialist epic conventions as a means of scrutinizing the consequences of foreign conquest of dominated peoples. It also ...functioned as a transitional literary form, a bridge between epic narratives of military heroics and novelistic narratives of commercial success. In Discourses of Empire, Barbara Simerka examines the representation of militant Christian imperialism in early modern Spanish literature by focusing on this counter-epic discourse. Simerka is drawn to literary texts that questioned or challenged the imperial project of the Hapsburg monarchy in northern Europe and the New World. She notes the variety of critical ideas across the spectrum of diplomatic, juridical, economic, theological, philosophical, and literary writings, and she argues that the presence of such competing discourses challenges the frequent assumption of a univocal, hegemonic culture in Spain during the imperial period. Simerka is especially alert to the ways in which different discourses—hegemonic, residual, emergent—coexist and compete simultaneously in the mediation of power. Discourses of Empire offers fresh insight into the political and intellectual conditions of Hapsburg imperialism, illuminating some rarely examined literary genres, such as burlesque epics, history plays, and indiano drama. Indeed, a special feature of the book is a chapter devoted specifically to indiano literature. Simerka's thorough working knowledge of contemporary literary theory and her inclusion of American, English, and French texts as points of comparison contribute much to current studies of Spanish Golden Age literature.
Whilst scholars of historical fiction have largely moved away from the idea of accuracy as a means of assessing historical fiction, fidelity to historical facts continues to be considered an ...important generic requirement of the form. To include anachronisms in any historical fiction is usually considered a mistake or an embarrassment, a sign that the requisite attention to historical detail has lapsed. For a new spate of historical television shows such as Reign (2013-17), Dickinson (2019) and The Great (2020), however, authenticity is not located in an objective measure of accuracy or fidelity, but instead lies within the explicit, textual acknowledgement that the context of creation shapes all historical drama. Apple TV+'s comedy/drama Dickinson, in particular, entirely bypasses the question of accuracy by embracing intentional anachronism. With its soundtrack of contemporary music and a contemporary queer progressive sensibility, Dickinson uses anachronism to suggest a new way of thinking about one of the most mythologised and enigmatic of American literary icons. The show self-consciously draws overt parallels between past and present to emphasise the familiarity of the past, rather than its strangeness, thus rejecting triumphalist readings of history and positing a new way for contemporary audiences to understand and access history. Dickinson also suggests a definition of authenticity that is not reliant on the development of a sense of verisimilitude. In its use of intentional anachronism and its insistence on capturing a sense of affective accuracy, Dickinson suggests a new way of thinking about the function and form of historical fiction in the twenty-first century.
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The development of the miniseries as a TV genre during the 1970s became central to American television's dramatization of the nation's history through stories that combined fact and fiction to relate ...the past to contemporary US culture. Rarely considered, however, is the
ways in which increasing slippages between the screen and real-world events might work to presage the culture and politics of the future, illuminating historical connections that move beyond a television drama's moment of production. This article explores the 1977 ABC miniseries Washington
Behind Closed Doors, an adaptation of John Ehrlichman's novel The Company and its fictional tale of a Nixon-like president, drawing on the author's experiences as part of the Nixon administration. Emerging in the contexts of the historical miniseries and various screen
depictions of Watergate, the show became part of a blurring of the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction in the re-telling of Richard Nixon's doomed tenure as president. At the same time, the article contends, the explicit fictionalization of the nation's recent political
history in Washington Behind Closed Doors provides a space in which to read the show as a prescient imagining of the United States' political future later realized in the presidency of Donald Trump.
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First published in 1957. This edition re-issues the second edition of 1965. Recognized as one of the leading books in its field, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare presents the most ...comprehensive account available of the English historical drama from its beginning to the closing of the theatres in 1642 and relates this development to Renaissance historiography and Elizabethan political theory.
This collection of original essays brings together museum, theatre, and performance case studies with a focus on their distinctive and overlapping modes of producing memory for transnational ...audiences. Whether this is through narrative, object, embodied encounter or a combination of the three, this volume considers distinctions and interactions between memory and history specifically through the lenses of theatre and performance studies, visual culture, and museum and curator studies. This book is underpinned by three areas of research enquiry: How are contemporary theatre makers and museum curators staging historical narratives of difficult pasts? How might comparisons between theatre and museum practices offer new insights into the role objects play in generating and representing difficult pasts? What points of overlap, comparison, and contrast among these constructions of history and memory of authoritarianism, slavery, colonialism, genocide, armed conflict, fascism, and communism might offer an expanded understanding of difficult pasts in these transnational cultural contexts? This collection is designed for any scholar of its central disciplines, as well as for those interested in cultural geography, memory studies, and postcolonial theory. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-ND) 4.0 license.
This second edition of No other Way To Tell It defines the form, analyses its codes and conventions, and reviews contrasting histories in America and British practice - taking into account new ...developments since the first edition. These include television’s radically new ecology; with factual formats a growth area. Docudrama in film has also burgeoned recently, partly because the industries themselves have grown closer and partly because of continued interest in the lives of the famous and of those in the news. International co-production now exploits many different screening opportunities and possibilities, with the result that docudrama and become a cinematic as well as televisual staple. Docudrama is not only popular with audiences; it also causes constant flurries of commentary and controversy. Concerns about ‘borders’ and ‘boundaries’, a questioning of documentary’s claim to represent the real, doubts about the popular audience’s ability to cope with new approaches to the ideas of witness, testimony and confession, authenticity and truth - all fuel the debate. This new edition situates docudrama and its ongoing debates within a newly vibrant and still highly contentious field of practice. This book will interest readers - academic and general - with an interest in fact-based drama in film, theatre and television
