Staging Romantic Chameleons and Imposters

Examining chameleonic identities as seen in theatrical performances and literary texts during the Romantic period, this study explores cultural attitudes toward imposture and how it reveals important and much-debated issues about this time period. Brewer shows chameleonism evoked anxieties about both social instability and British selfhood.

List of contents

Introduction 1. The Case of the Pretended Duke of Ormond 2. Richard Cumberland's Imposters 3. Thomas Holcroft's Politicized Imposter and Sycophantic Chameleon 4. Fluid Identities in Hannah Cowley's Universal Masquerade 5. Mary Robinson's Polygraphs 6. James Kenney's Opportunistic, Reformative, and Imitative Chameleons Epilogue: The Perkin Warbeck Debate

About the author

William D. Brewer is Professor of English at Appalachian State University, USA.

Summary

Examining chameleonic identities as seen in theatrical performances and literary texts during the Romantic period, this study explores cultural attitudes toward imposture and how it reveals important and much-debated issues about this time period. Brewer shows chameleonism evoked anxieties about both social instability and British selfhood.

Additional text

“William D. Brewer’s Staging Romantic Cha-meleons and Imposters proposes a broad definition of theatricality that moves from the stage to the page and from the world of fiction to real-life imposters. … This book will interest not only scholars of the period’s drama but also students of, say, Keatsian poetics or Byronic mobility.” (Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 56 (4), Autumn, 2016) 

Report

"William D. Brewer's Staging Romantic Cha-meleons and Imposters proposes a broad definition of theatricality that moves from the stage to the page and from the world of fiction to real-life imposters. ... This book will interest not only scholars of the period's drama but also students of, say, Keatsian poetics or Byronic mobility." (Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 56 (4), Autumn, 2016) 

Product details

• Authors: W. Brewer, William D Brewer, William D. Brewer
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 25.11.2015
• EAN: 9781349482320
• ISBN: 978-1-349-48232-0
• No. of pages: 268
• Series: Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters; Nineteenth-Century Major Lives; Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters; Nineteenth-Century Major Lives
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; B, European History, Poetry, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literature: history & criticism, Poetry and Poetics, History of Britain and Ireland, Great Britain—History, European Literature, Literature, Modern—19th century, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Eighteenth-Century Literature, Literature, Modern—18th century, Literature—History and criticism, Literary History, British literature, British and Irish Literature, Palgrave Literature Collection, performance;reform;Romanticism;time;William James