Michael D'Alessandro, "Staged Readings: Contesting Class in Popular American Theater and Literature, 1835-75"
English | ISBN: 0472133179 | 2022 | 330 pages | EPUB | 3 MB
Staged Readings studies the social consequences of 19th-century America's two most prevalent leisure forms: theater and popular literature. In the midst of watershed historical developments-including numerous waves of immigration, two financial Panics, increasing wealth disparities, and the Civil War-American theater and literature were developing at unprecedented rates. Playhouses became crowded with new spectators, best-selling novels flew off the shelves, and, all the while, distinct social classes began to emerge. While the middle and upper classes were espousing conservative literary tastes and attending family matinees and operas, laborers were reading dime novels and watching downtown spectacle melodramas like