In this text, Paula Backscheider puts forward evidence of the origin of mass culture and the importance of public opinion in 17th-century England. She argues that historians and literary critics have overestimated the importance of printed texts and literacy in the formation of a politically involved and opinionated public. Backscheider looks to other texts - to popular drama as well as less accessible forms such as street pageants and Christmas pantomimes - and discovers deliberate and sophisticated interactions of mass culture and public opinion. Backscheider offers three detailed examples of how popular literature participates in important social processes in which public opinion and acceptance are at stake. In the reconstruction of the London street pageants staged from 1659 to 1662, she describes how Charles II used theatrical events to re-impose the concept of a Stuart monarchy - and how his opponents responded with rival entertainments advocating a different idea of the monarchy and the future. She then examines the London theatrical season of 1695-96, when one third of the new plays performed were written by women.
Here, Backscheider shows how transgressive, revisionary literature can awaken censoring and collaborative forces even as it opens debate. In her final section, Backscheider presents the first critical reconstruction and serious analysis of Gothic drama, an early example of "mass culture". She demonstrates how these popular entertainments expressed the public's deepest anxieties, while offering a redeeming image of humankind and the nation, as England faced the Regency Crisis of 1788-89, when George III was judged "hopelessly mad". Paula R. Backscheider is the editor of the three-volume "Restoration and Eighteenth-century Drama" for "The Dictionary of Literary Biography" and the author of "Daniel Defoe - his Life", which was the recipient of the British Council Prize.
- ISBN10 0801845688
- ISBN13 9780801845680
- Publish Date 1 September 1993
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 14 September 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 296
- Language English