The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800-1865The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800–1865 argues that to truly understand the short story form, one must look at how it was shaped by the lively, chaotic, and deeply politicized world of 19th-century transatlantic theater and performance culture. By resurrecting long-neglected theatrical influences on representative works of short fiction, Michael J. Collins demonstrates that it was the unruly culture of the stage that first energized this most significant of American art forms. Whether it was Washington Irving’s first job as theater critic, Melville’s politically controversial love of British drama, Alcott’s thwarted dreams of stage stardom, Poe and Lippard’s dramatizations of peculiarly bloodthirsty fraternity hazings, or Hawthorne’s fascination with automata, theater was a key imaginative site for the major pioneers of the American short story. The book shows how perspectives from theater studies, anthropology, and performance studies can enrich readings of the short-story form. Moving beyond arbitrary distinctions between performance and text, it suggests that this literature had a social life and was engaged with questions of circumatlantic and transnational culture. It suggests that the short story itself was never conceived as a nationalist literary form, but worked by mobilizing cosmopolitan connections and meanings. In so doing, the book resurrects a neglected history of American Federalism and its connections to British literary forms. |
Contents
The Irving Brothers at the Park Theatre 1802 | 1 |
Washington Irvings The SketchBook of Geoffrey Crayon Gent | 33 |
Fraternalism and Performance in Poe and Lippard | 77 |
Richelieu Ritual and Republicanism in Melvilles Diptychs | 117 |
Melvilles Child Prodigies | 153 |
Performing Sincerity in Hawthornes New England | 191 |
Louisa May Alcotts Theatrical Realism | 227 |
Notes | 245 |
| 251 | |
| 265 | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Alcott American Amontillado antebellum Astor Place Astor Place Riot audience Bartleby Bartleby’s Betty body British brotherhood Bulwer-Lytton’s carnival Cask of Amontillado century character claims context Crayon critics democratic desire diptych drama early Edith and Edgar effect elite embodied emergent exchange expression Federalist force Fortunato fraternal genre George Lippard gesture Hautboy Hawthorne Hawthorne’s Helmstone ideal identity imagination increasingly individual Irving Irving’s labor Leslie’s Lippard literary magazine marketplace Masonic Maypole means melodrama Melville Melville’s Merry Mount middle-class modern Montressor narrative narrator narrator’s nationalist nineteenth nineteenth-century Oldstyle one’s performance play Poe’s political popular print culture public sphere Puritan reader reading relation relationship republican Richelieu Rip Van Winkle Rip’s rites ritual role romantic sentimental short fiction short story sketch Sketch-Book Sleepy Hollow social space stage sublime suggests symbolic tale theatre theatrical tion tradition transatlantic transcendentalist vision women writing York