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The popular picturesque : landscape in Boucicault's Irish plays
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Smyth, Patricia (2016) The popular picturesque : landscape in Boucicault's Irish plays. New Theatre Quarterly, 32 (4). pp. 347-362. doi:10.1017/S0266464X16000427 ISSN 0266-464X.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266464X16000427
Abstract
The inspiration for Dion Boucicault's first Irish subject, The Colleen Bawn, in a set of pictur esque views of Ireland after the artist W. H. Bartlett is well documented, and Bartlett's iconography of wild scenery, moonlight, round towers, and ruined abbeys features strongly throughout the Irish plays. Although Bartlett's compositions were widely known in the nineteenth century, there has been little consideration of how they may have informed the audience's understanding of the plays. Rather, they are regarded as a set of clichéd, stereotyped images, which the playwright subverted through a process of ironic distancing and repurposing. In this article Patricia Smyth argues that, on the contrary, Boucicault made use of the mythical and supernatural associations of picturesque Ireland in order to convey a particular narrative of Irish history. Patricia Smyth is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Warwick. She has published articles and book chapters on French and British nineteenth-century art, visual culture and theatre. She is co-editor of Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film, co-edited with Jim Davis a special issue dedicated to theatrical iconography (2012), and is currently completing a book on Paul Delaroche and theatre.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PR English literature | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Boucicault, Dion, 1820-1890 -- The Colleen Bawn -- Criticism and interpretation, Bartlett, W.H. (William Henry), 1809-1854, Melodrama | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | New Theatre Quarterly | ||||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0266-464X | ||||||||
Official Date: | November 2016 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 32 | ||||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 347-362 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0266464X16000427 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 29 May 2018 |
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