Thesis ID: CBB001567295

Stages of Suffering: Performing Illness in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Theatre (2011)

unapi

Conti, Meredith Ann (Author)


University of Pittsburgh
McConachie, Bruce


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Advisor: McConachie, Bruce.
Physical Details: 373 pp.
Language: English

Few life occurrences shaped individual and collective identities within Victorian society as critically as suffering (or witnessing a loved one suffering) from illness. Boasting both a material reality of pathologies, morbidities, and symptoms and a metaphorical life of stigmas, icons, and sentiments, the cultural construct of illness was an indisputable staple on the late-nineteenth-century stage. This dissertation analyzes popular performances of illness (both somatic and psychological) to determine how such embodiments confirmed or counteracted salient medical, cultural, and individualized expressions of illness. I also locate within general nineteenth-century acting practices an embodied lexicon of performed illness (comprised of readily identifiable physical and vocal signs) that traversed generic divides and aesthetic movements. Performances of contagious disease are evaluated using over sixty years of consumptive Camilles; William Gillette's embodiment of the cocaine-injecting Sherlock Holmes and Richard Mansfield's fiendishly grotesque transformations in the double role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are employed in an investigation of performances of drug addiction; and the psychological disorders enacted by Henry Irving and Ellen Terry at the Lyceum Theatre serve as the centerpiece of an exploration of performances of mental illness. Each performance type is further illuminated using a dominant identity category: I contend that contagion was subtly tethered to notions of nationality and boundary crossings, Victorian class strata informed performances of addiction, and prevailing understandings of the masculine and feminine inspired the gendering of mental illness categories. In an age in which the expansion of physician authority and the public's faith in the findings of medical science encouraged a gradual decentralization of the patient from her own diagnosis and treatment, I see Victorian performances of illness as potentially curative. Even on the popular stage, where the primary objective was to entertain, performances of illness crucially restored the patient and his illness (both figuratively and literally) to center stage in ways unsurpassed by the period's novelists, painters, social reformers, and journalists. The difficulty of articulating experiential suffering with words or brushstrokes was partially ameliorated in theatrical enactments of illness. After all, theatre's very nature guarantees that when words fail, bodies take up the cause.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 72/11, May 2012. Proquest Document ID: 888202976.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567295/

Similar Citations

Book Bogousslavsky, Julien; Dieguez, Sebastian; (2013)
Literary Medicine: Brain Disease and Doctors in Novels, Theater, and Film (/isis/citation/CBB001551850/)

Article Santos, Fernando Sergio Dumas dos; Verani, Ana Carolina; (2010)
Alcoolismo e medicina psiquiátrica no Brasil do início do século XX (/isis/citation/CBB001420497/)

Book Marco Castellari; (2014)
Formula e metafora: figure di scienziati nelle letterature e culture contemporanee (/isis/citation/CBB976488878/)

Book Wright, David; (2011)
Downs: The History of a Disability (/isis/citation/CBB001200871/)

Article Hunting, Penelope; (2012)
Charles Dickens (1812--70): “The longer I live the more I doubt the doctors” (/isis/citation/CBB001200788/)

Book Sara E. Black; (2022)
Drugging France: Mind-Altering Medicine in the Long Nineteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB100452937/)

Article Mark Elam; (2015)
How the Brain Disease Paradigm Remoralizes Addictive Behaviour (/isis/citation/CBB789369122/)

Book Grinnell, George C.; (2010)
The Age of Hypochondria: Interpreting Romantic Health and Illness (/isis/citation/CBB001020728/)

Article Gardner-Thorpe, Christopher; (2002)
Neurology of the Arts: Mansell Bequest Symposium at the Medical Society of London 30 April-1 May 2001 (/isis/citation/CBB000500990/)

Book Carrie Rohman; (2018)
Choreographies of the Living: Bioaesthetics in Literature, Art, and Performance (/isis/citation/CBB562865624/)

Book Rousseau, G. S.; Gill, Miranda; Haycock, David; Herwig, Malte; (2003)
Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History (/isis/citation/CBB000501990/)

Book Foth, Thomas; (2013)
Caring and Killing: Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany, 1931--1943 (/isis/citation/CBB001420275/)

Thesis Osborn, Matthew Warner; (2007)
The Anatomy of Intemperance: Alcohol and the Diseased Imagination inPhiladelphia, 1784--1860 (/isis/citation/CBB001561307/)

Article Sara Black; (2019)
Morphine on Trial: Legal Medicine and Criminal Responsibility in the Fin de Siècle (/isis/citation/CBB218342384/)

Article Lewy, Jonathan; (2012)
Limited to No Responsibility: Addiction, Alcoholism and the Law in Modern Germany (/isis/citation/CBB001232176/)

Article John Jarrell; Frank W. Stahnisch; (2021)
Contextualizing ovarian pain in the late 19th century — Part 1: Women with “hysteria” and “hystero-epilepsy” (/isis/citation/CBB184880183/)

Authors & Contributors
Black, Sara E.
Jarrell, John
Giulia Peroni
Marco Castellari
Rohman, Carrie
Dieguez, Sebastian
Concepts
Disease and diseases
Mental disorders and diseases
Science and literature
Addictive behavior
Drama, dance, and performing arts
Medicine
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Modern
Places
Germany
France
Europe
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Philadelphia, PA
Institutions
Salpêtrière, Paris
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment