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“The London Spy” (Ned [Edward] Ward) mentions a rope-walker whose ‘Tyburn locks foretold such an unhappy destiny that I was fearful of his falling, lest his hempen pedestal should have catch’d his neck. He commanded the rope to be alter’d according to his mind with such an affected lordliness that, by his imperious deportment, I …
Continue reading "The Blondin Memorial Trust – Funambulus / Funambule – A Potted History"
The early eighteenth-century entertainment economy can be characterized by its variety and its modernity. The participatory spaces of entertainment were newly shaped by public debate and the world of print; in this brave new world of print and plenty, the mass audience begins to take shape. One component of this modern entertainment economy that has …
Just to see how a WP site would work for our purposes, I created a sample site. Some things that occurred to me: Wouldn't it be great to have different users for all the letter writers in the novel? How would this work, though, when the posts are exported for later use? Typically, authors are …
"Abject, Delude, Create: The Aesthetic Self-Consciousness of Early Eighteenth-Century Farce." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research (Volume 25 Issue 1) Abstract: In the early eighteenth century, farce was a much-maligned form of theater, in part because of its over-indulgence in the corporeal. This essay seeks to re-conceptualize the significance of farce by examining its self-conscious spectacularization …
Just had a very interesting conversation with Martha about a project idea that has languished for a year or so, but which I definitely want to pursue with her now--The Clarissa Project, a Pepys' Diary-like concatenated distribution of Richardson's behemoth, that can be used in the classroom on multiple occasions. Maybe a WordPress version, each …
Popular Culture Association San Antonio TX March 2011 “All deformed Shapes”: Refiguring the Posture Master as Popular Performer in Early Eighteenth-Century England" The early eighteenth-century entertainment economy can be characterized by its variety and its modernity. Host to pre-Restoration repertory plays and bawdy Restoration comedies, heroic tragedies and experimental work, emerging bourgeois dramas, farcical afterpieces, …
2010 ASECS Albuquerque, TX “'Things without Head, or Tail, or Form, or Grace': The Hypercorporeality of Farce on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage” An increasingly—and problematically—popular form on the stage during the early eighteenth century, farce thrives on the actions of bodies that, in their very embodiment, problematize the imagined integrity of the human. Instead of …
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ASECS 2009 Richmond, VA "Harlequin Toft; or, Imposture, Pantomime, and the Instabilities of Satire in the Early Eighteenth Century" From October to December of 1726, Mary Toft hacked dead rabbits into small and not-so-small pieces; forced them, piece-by-piece into her vagina; then expelled these “made…monster[s]”i under the gazes of eminent and not-so-eminent medical men, scholars, …
“Teaching the L-o-n-g Eighteenth Century” 2008 EC/ASECS, Georgetown University Roundtable Remarks Lisa asked us to think about how we teach long works in our period, and I was struck by the fact that when I first saw the call for papers, I immediately thought of how my students perceive length. I teach at a small, …
2007 ASECS, Atlanta GA “‘To Exhibit a Dumb Shew’: Hogarth and the Theater” Handouts “Irregular Theater, the Discourse of Farce, and Hogarth’s Line of Deformity” During the first half of the eighteenth century, a brand of so-called “irregular” theatrical entertainment—popular, not always licensed or legitimate, both “English” and “foreign”—made its problematic way into the public …
Continue reading "Irregular Theater, the Discourse of Farce, and Hogarth’s Line of Deformity"
Tonya Howe 