Playing out the empire Ben-Hur and other toga plays and films, 1883 - 1908 ; a critical anthology

Playing Out the Empire provides a unique introduction to the 'toga play', a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and re-emerged in silent cinema and later 'epics', and which sheds important new light on British and American social and cult...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Weitere Verfasser: Mayer, David (BerichterstatterIn), Preston, Katherine K. (BerichterstatterIn)
Format: UnknownFormat
Sprache:eng
Veröffentlicht: Oxford Clarendon Press 1994
Schlagworte:
Online Zugang:Inhaltsverzeichnis
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Playing Out the Empire provides a unique introduction to the 'toga play', a genre of theatrical melodrama which flourished in the late nineteenth century and re-emerged in silent cinema and later 'epics', and which sheds important new light on British and American social and cultural history
The volume brings together the most important playscripts and film scenarios of the genre. Set in the post-Republican Roman Empire, toga plays and films presented Roman and Jewish heroes, Christian virgins, seductive 'adventuresses', insane Emperors, savage lions, and racing chariots. But, as David Mayer shows in his lively critical introductions, the plays also ventured clandestinely into issues of class, gender, religion, immigration, and imperialism
Among the restored scripts and scenarios included here - all of which are previously unpublished and generously illustrated - are those of Claudian (1883); the most popular of all Victorian melodramas, The Sign of the Cross (1895); and the stage spectacular Ben-Hur (1899), together with its earliest cinematic version (1907). D. W. Griffith's first toga film, The Barbarian Ingomar (1908) is represented by a lengthy selection of film stills
Beschreibung:XII, 321 S.
Ill.
ISBN:0198119909
0-19-811990-9