RACISM ON THE VICTORIAN STAGE: REPRESENTATION OF SLAVERY AND THE BLACK CHARACTER.

Description:

"While there are many studies of nineteenth-century race theories and scientific racism, the attitudes and stereotypes expressed in popular culture have rarely been examined, and then only for the latter half of the century. Theatre then was mass entertainment and these forgotten plays, hastily written, surviving only as hand-written manuscripts or cheap pamphlets, are a rich seam for the cultural historian. Mining them to discover how 'race' was viewed and how the stereotype of the black developed and degraded sheds light on the development of racism in English culture. In the process, this book helps to explain how a certain flexibility in attitudes towards skin colour, observable at the end of the eighteenth century, changed into the hardened jingoism of the late nineteenth. Concentrating on the period 1830 to 1860, its detailed excavation of some seventy plays makes it invaluable to the theatre historian and black studies scholar."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: History,  Theater and society,  Racism and the arts,  Racism in popular culture,  Race in literature,  PERFORMING ARTS,  Theater,  Rassendiscriminatie,  English drama,  Slavery in literature,  Rassismus,  Drama,  Slavernij,  Toneel,  History and criticism,  Racism in literature,  General,  Prejudices in literature,  Victoriaanse tijd,  English drama, history and criticism, 19th century,  Theater, great britain, history

Places: Great Britain

Times: 19th century