The Orient of the Boulevards : : Exoticism, Empire, and Nineteenth-Century French Theater / / Angela C. Pao.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Pao, Angela C.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2015]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: New Cultural Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.) :; 11 illus.

The author draws upon the methodologies of theater and cultural studies to examine the construction of "the Orient" on the Parisian stage during the nineteenth century, the period of France's first imperial expansions into North Africa and the Middle East.As an increasingly large segment of the French population moved into contact with the Middle East and North Africa as soldiers, colonial administrators, settlers, and merchants, the balance between fantasy and immediacy in Orientalized drama shifted. The domestic melodrama gave way to elaborately staged military spectacles based on current events. Performed before working-class audiences, many of whose members were to be called up for military service, these spectacles bore explicit political and imperial agendas.Mining rich archival resources of play-texts, censorship reports, critical reviews, and contemporary writings on performance practice, this book reveals the complex processes by which the institutions of popular culture helped shape nineteenth-century notions of race, ethnicity, and nationality.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction: From the Orient as Theater to the Orient in the Theater -- Domestic Exoticism -- 1. Nineteenth-Century Popular Theater -- 2. Exotic Tragedy -- 3. Exotic Boundaries -- 4. Oriental Escapades -- Dramatic Campaigns -- 5. National Images -- 6. Fictions of War -- 7. Oriental Campaigns in Print and on Stage -- 8. Occident versus Orient -- Conclusion: From Stage to Screen -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments -- Index