The book is in two parts. In the first, the author recreates the historical phenomenon of the English masquerade: the makeup of the crowds, the symbolic language of costume, and the various codes of verbal exchange, gesture, and sexual behavior.
The second part analyzes contemporary literary representations of the masquerade, using novels by Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Inchbald to show how the masquerade in fiction reflected the disruptive power it had in contemporary life. It also served as an indispensable plot-catalyst, generating the complications out of which the essential drama of the fiction emerged. An epilogue discusses the use of the masquerade as a literary device after the eighteenth century. The book contains some 40 illustrations.
The book is in two parts. In the first, the author recreates the historical phenomenon of the English masquerade: the makeup of the crowds, the symbolic language of costume, and the various codes of verbal exchange, gesture, and sexual behavior.
The second part analyzes contemporary literary representations of the masquerade, using novels by Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Inchbald to show how the masquerade in fiction reflected the disruptive power it had in contemporary life. It also served as an indispensable plot-catalyst, generating the complications out of which the essential drama of the fiction emerged. An epilogue discusses the use of the masquerade as a literary device after the eighteenth century. The book contains some 40 illustrations.
Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction
396Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction
396Paperback(1)
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780804714686 |
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Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
Publication date: | 12/01/1987 |
Edition description: | 1 |
Pages: | 396 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.92(d) |