Margarete Rubik

Provocative and unforgettable: Peter Carey's short fiction – A Cognitive Approach

The article sets out to prove that the haunting effect of Peter Careys remarkable short fiction is largely due to his masterful manipulation of cognitive schemata the reader is invited to employ to make sense of the action. This paper investigates Careys use of metalepsis (i.e., the transgression of the borderline between the text world and the actual world), which incriminates the reader in the cultural critique voiced in the story; it also examines the disturbing ambiguity as to whether the narrative is situated in fictional reality or in the dream world of a character and the sustained oscillation between realistic and fantastic scripts; and it analyses the startling reversal of the wonted relationship of figure and ground in Careys stories and the blending of provocative but disparate images which cannot be harmonised into a unified cognitive schema and thus resist closure. These features, it is argued, destabilise our reliance on the most familiar and basic laws of the acutal world, create existential anxiety and make the stories persistently reverberate in the readers mind.

LOVE'S MERCHANDISE: METAPHORS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE IN THE PLAYS OF APHRA BEHN

This article examines the commercial images in Behns comedies, which abound in examples of sexually connoted mercantile terms to a degree that far exceeds their average use in Restoration comedy. Behn sided with the Court Party against the Whig merchants, but she did not simply juxtapose the feudal ethos of the aristocrats to the mercantile ethos of the middle class. She concurred with contemporary economists who rejected the hoarding of money as detrimental to the national economy and regarded aristocratic prodigality as a driving force for trade. As her rakes well understand, the true utility of money consists in allowing them to acquire desirable goods, whose perceived value is subjective, depending on the difference in usefulness to the consumers. Her rakes frequently speak of themselves as both buyers and sellers of (sexual) merchandise, thereby blurring the difference between the genders and classes. Both women and men in her comedies are commodified and commodify themselves, laying out their charms like luxury wares. In her mercantile imagery, Behn also engages with new forms of commercial ventures and writes about early capitalist economy in a much more differentiated and knowledgeable way than is generally acknowledged.

English drama at the German theatre in Ljubljana in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy

This article examines the English repertoire of the German theatre in Ljubljana in the last decades of the Habsburg monarchy and its reception by the local German newspaper, Laibacher Zeitung. It considers only drama, not operas or operettas. The English plays were, of course, performed in translation, in German, as opposed to the plays performed in the Slovenian language from the late 18th century on and especially within the Dramaticno drustvo circle established in 1867. The choice of performances gives interesting insights into the late 19th century attitude towards English culture as well as the self-image fostered by the German stage in Ljubljana.

Stories of Empire: Narrative Strategies for the Legitimation of an Imperial World Order

By utilising cognitive and narrative methodology to interpret the discourses that established and challenged colonialist mentalities, this collection of essays outlines new approaches to the understanding of the imaginary foundations of empire. Its multidisciplinary approaches to the cross-fertilisations between historical documents and fi ctional projections shed light on the techniques that were used to transform the abstract conception of empire into a concrete set of relationships that legitimated colonialist supremacy over the subjugated parts of the world. The contributors to this volume identify a number of typical stories that gave voice to contemporary views about the respective place of different cultures on a rigidly defi ned hierarchy of societal progress and civilisation. Analyses of narrative patterns, that is formulae for imperial story telling and postcolonial subversions, are complemented with interpretations of prominent metaphors and generic conventions that implied that colonised peoples were in need of imperial guidance. The essays offer innovative discussions of historical documents, travel writing, and literary works that favoured and challenged imperial mentalities.

Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald

Two women dramatists of the late eighteenth century deserve special attention: Hannah Cowley and Elizabeth Inchbald. They were different in temperament, background and style, but they were both highly professional and very successful. Both were mainly writers of comedy and, in many ways, exemplified the tastes and fashions of their period. But they were more adroit than their rivals in shaping effective plots, and they were also shrewder in their dealings with the male theatrical establishment.

Women Dramatists of the Early Eighteenth Century

There is general agreement among critics that drama went into a long decline in the course of the eighteenth century. In the general uncertainty as to what might humour theatre-goers, plays became more diversified from the second decade of the century onwards, with ‘reformed’ Restoration comedies, sentimental comedies, farces, harlequinades, romances, tragi-comedies, heroic plays, ‘classical’ tragedies and historical tragedies being performed. Yet fewer new plays were put on by theatres and production opportunities were less easily forthcoming, a stiffening of climate felt especially by women playwrights, who found it difficult to establish a career in the theatre. Even those newcomers who were given a chance seem to have been quickly discouraged. Except for Centlivre with her prolific output, in the period until 1750 only two women had more than two legitimate plays performed on a London stage: Eliza Haywood, with four productions, and Mrs Hoper, with three. Charlotte Charke had two plays performed, and a puppet show, and Mrs Cooper could boast of two productions. Plays that were performed were not necessarily printed and are therefore lost, such as Letitia Pilkington’s comedy The Turkish Court, or The London Prentice (performed in Dublin in 1748), or the afterpiece The Maggot, which the actress Mrs Egleton wrote and performed on her own benefit night at Lincolri’s Inn Fields in 1732. Productions of new plays, of course, fell off sharply after the Licensing Act, when those women who had found a home in Fielding’s Haymarket Theatre found themselves on the street. So after 1737 it became more common to have an unacted play printed, a practice that had been comparatively rare except among aristocrats in earlier periods.

Women Dramatists of the Early Restoration Period

The Restoration period was, of course, a time of innovation as far as the involvement of women with the theatre is concerned. The first woman ever to publish her collected dramatic works in folio editions, in 1662 and 1668 — indeed, the first female playwright ever to bring out her work — was Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (the stepmother to Elizabeth and Jane, discussed in Chapter 1). Yet, like her aristocratic predecessors, she did not write for the public stage, less for genteel considerations than because, as she confessed in the dedication to her Playes (1662), she feared they would be booed. Unlike her forerunners, however, she wrote and published with the avowed hope of achieving lasting fame (Prologue of Playes), an ambition which echoes Aphra Behri’s wistful wish for immortality. This flouted the canons of respectability of her sex and even more the decorum of her class, which regarded publication as the reward of fame, not as a means of achieving it.14 In fact, she was more ambitious than talented as a dramatist, but by dint of her feminist outspokenness she has lately received a lot of attention from modern scholars.

Women Dramatists at the Turn of the Century

The 1680s and early 1690s were a difficult time for dramatists. Political unrest, from the Popish Plot to the Glorious Revolution in 1688, caused a sharp drop in theatre attendance, about which Behn complained in her Prologue to The Feigned Courtesans. William III showed no interest in the stage and had no intention of renewing the patronage of his predecessors. The King’s Company collapsed in 1682 owing to financial mismanagement and merged with the Duke’s Company to become the United Company, leaving the market for new plays extremely limited. Behn herself had been forced to find other sources of income and had started to write novels. After her death in 1689, it took six years before a play by a new woman dramatist was performed on a London stage. The situation improved only when the United Company split up in 1695, and Betterton led a group of star actors to Lincoln’s Inn Field. The sudden new competition between the two playhouses revived the flagging market and also led to a spectacular upsurge in women dramatists in the 11 years between 1695 and 1706.

Towards a Female Tradition in the Theatre

Is there a distinctive female tone in women’s drama between 1550 and 1800? Or did female playwrights completely internalise the male norms of their eras, and are their works hence indistinguishable from those of men? The question is complicated not only by the diverse and contradictory nature of the material surveyed, but also by fundamental disagreement, even among critics of modern drama, where feminist stances are much more pronounced, as to what, in fact, constitutes women’s theatre. Any drama written by a woman? Or only theatre made and done by feminists? All plays concentrating on the quotidian concerns of women, no matter whether written by women or men? Or only political theatre revealing the dynamics of power and gender, and deconstructing traditional forms of presentation?77

Contemporary and Modern Performances of the Plays

In the Restoration period, a number of superb actors walked the stage, but it was felt that, in acting, nature must be augmented by dignity and beauty. Accordingly, acting was stylised, delivery was declamatory, and set gestures and facial expressions were used to convey specific emotions: a stamp of the foot implied anger, guilt was expressed by eyes cast to one side and head bent low, bashfulness by a hand placed over the mouth.76 Most performers did not stay in character when it was their colleagues’ turn to speak and up to Garrick in the middle of the eighteenth century there was little sense of ensemble acting. Garrick also introduced a more natural style of acting and delivery. However, when the two legitimate theatres were rebuilt at the end of the eighteenth century to seat more than 3000 spectators each, performers were dwarfed by these dimensions and returned to a more artificial and melodramatic acting style to make themselves understood in the gallery.