Spectacle and Sensation in <i>The Octoroon/An Octoroon</i>

Curry, J. K.

doi:10.1177/1748372719826895

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 16 publications

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“…Algunas de las obras de sensaciones más repuestas en Londres eran precisamente populares por su alto contenido en este tipo de escenas; por ejemplo, Slave Life (1852), de Mark Lemon y Tom Taylor para el Adelphi, adaptaba la exitosa novela de Beecher Stowe que tanto había dado que hablar, y la escena de venta de esclavos en The Octoroon (1859) de Dion Boucicault, apelaba a las emociones de un público que tan concienciado estaba en contra de la esclavitud 2 . Asimismo, los dramaturgos de mediados de siglo reinterpretaban hasta la saciedad novelas, historias o relatos populares, casi siempre de una manera bastante libre (Meer, 2018;Curry, 2019). De esta manera, las historias de sus buenos y buenas salvajes protagonistas eran reconfiguradas según el contexto sociohistórico, llegando a ser determinantes en la formación del ideario colonial de la época.…”

Section: La Buena Salvaje En El Melodrama De Los 1860unclassified

«You saved her life and she adores you for it»: la buena salvaje en el melodrama inglés de los 1860

Terol

2021

AEF

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El origen del personaje tipo del buen salvaje o «noble savage» se remonta a 1672, cuando John Dryden atribuyó cierta cualidad de pureza o libertad al salvaje que vivía ajeno a la civilización. Más adelante, el filósofo francés Jean Jacques Rousseau (1754), definió al buen salvaje como un ser inocente y no corrupto. Aunque el buen salvaje ha sido principalmente representado como hombre, también existen figuras femeninas que siguen el mismo patrón. El presente artículo pretende arrojar luz sobre la representación de la buena salvaje en el teatro de sensaciones o «sensation drama» de Londres a mediados del siglo XIX. Tras revisar la figura del buen salvaje, sus alternativas femeninas y su consiguiente iconografía, se ofrecen dos estudios de caso: Cahontas, the Delaware’s Daughter (1860) y The Prairie Flower (1860). Las protagonistas de estas obras de ambientación western nos permitirán explorar la representación y percepción pública de la buena salvaje.

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Section: La Buena Salvaje En El Melodrama De Los 1860unclassified

«You saved her life and she adores you for it»: la buena salvaje en el melodrama inglés de los 1860

Terol

2021

AEF

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Therapy-as-Theatre: Porosity and Circulations of Feeling in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (2014) and Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing (2013)

Busch,

Liedke

2024

Zeitschrift Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik

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This article examines how theatre works as a form of therapy using Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon. Both depict fictional representations of psychotherapy but also use concepts from narrative therapy as developed by White and Epston (1990), such as the audience as witnesses and creators of their own story. We argue that therapy-as-theatre exerts a pull on the audience, which invites them to empathize, identify and understand, and draws them into the “affective arrangement” of the plays as defined by Slaby, Mühlhoff, and Wüschner (2019). The two plays bring together the therapeutic and the theatrical both in terms of content and form: in Every Brilliant Thing, the performer explicitly re-enacts conversations with a counsellor and mimics the therapy setting by sharing with the audience their feelings concerning the suicide of their mother. Similarly, in An Octoroon, the playwright’s alter ego BJJ makes himself vulnerable to the audience. However, the play also confronts spectators with hard truths about the history and topicality of racism that they may not be prepared to hear. Within the specific time frame of the shows, similar to the frame of a psychotherapy session, the two plays create self-contained affective spaces where feelings and emotions circulate between performers, spectators and among audience members.

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Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s and Dion Boucicault’s Sensational Re-writings across Media:The Octoroon

Palmer

2022

Victoriographies

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This article seeks to add to the conversation around transmedia practices in Victorian culture and to suggest that sensation, a particular type of storytelling that sought to affect its audiences physically and emotionally with its extreme events in contemporary settings, was significant to the development of transmedia practices in the ease with which sensationalists moved their stories across boundaries and the highly self-reflexive way in which they did so. Whilst contemporary reviewers expressed anxiety about the fractured and multiple means by which sensation could be consumed, sensation writers like novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon and playwright Dion Boucicault highlighted their sensational productions as transmedia, often in the face of critical opprobrium. Examining both writers’ versions of The Octoroon (1861–2), a story about racial inequality set in antebellum Louisiana, we can see how offering readers and audiences sensational stories that continued, expanded or re-told other sensational stories kept Victorian consumers coming back for more. Sensation, this article suggests, was at the forefront of stimulating its audiences in new ways: bodily, intellectually, and emotionally, and that the transmedia connectedness of sensationalists’ work increased their capacity to create new sensations.

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Spectacle and Sensation in The Octoroon/An Octoroon

Cited by 3 publications

References 16 publications

«You saved her life and she adores you for it»: la buena salvaje en el melodrama inglés de los 1860

«You saved her life and she adores you for it»: la buena salvaje en el melodrama inglés de los 1860

Therapy-as-Theatre: Porosity and Circulations of Feeling in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (2014) and Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing (2013)

Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s and Dion Boucicault’s Sensational Re-writings across Media:The Octoroon

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