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Scenes from Bourgeois Life

Nicholas Ridout author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:The University of Michigan Press

Published:5th Jul '22

Should be back in stock very soon

Scenes from Bourgeois Life cover

Scenes from Bourgeois Life proposes that theatre spectatorship has made a significant contribution to the historical development of a distinctive bourgeois sensibility, characterized by the cultivation of distance. In Nicholas Ridout’s formulation, this distance is produced and maintained at two different scales. First is the distance of the colonial relation, not just in miles between Jamaica and London, but also the social, economic, and psychological distances involved in that relation. The second is the distance of spectatorship, not only of the modern theatregoer as consumer, but the larger and pervasive disposition to observe, comment, and sit in judgment, which becomes characteristic of the bourgeois relation to the rest of the world. This engagingly written study of history, class, and spectatorship offers compelling proof of “why theater matters,” and demonstrates the importance of examining the question historically.

“Ridout’s prose is a pleasure to read; his glosses on theory are illuminating; his excavations of primary texts are surprising; his argument is timely, and substantial enough to influence the course of scholarship in the field.”
—Julia Jarcho, Brown University

ISBN: 9780472039203

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

224 pages