Staging Restoration England in the Post-Heritage Theatre Film: Gender and Power in Stage Beauty and The Libertine
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Ingo Berensmeyer
Abstract
This article analyses two British post-heritage films, Richard Eyre’s Stage Beauty (2004) and Laurence Dunmore’s The Libertine (2005). Both films are set in the seventeenth century and use the theatre as a central metaphor to describe and capture the cultural sensibilities of Restoration England. Both are based on stage plays in which theatre also functions as a site of resistance to cultural and social norms of gender and sexual politics. However, both films end by reinscribing and reaffirming the norms they set out to question, as transgressive desire is preempted and contained by an aesthetics of spectacle. Approaching the films in the light of gender performativity and queer theory, as well as examining their depiction of historical figures like Edward Kynaston and Elizabeth Barry, King Charles II and the earl of Rochester, this essay tries to find out why Restoration England appears to be so difficult to present cinematically
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Inhalt
- Editorial
- Language and the Edges of Humanity: Orang-Utans and Wild Girls in Monboddo and Peacock
- Staging Restoration England in the Post-Heritage Theatre Film: Gender and Power in Stage Beauty and The Libertine
- ‘The Gift of Seeing’ – ‘The Eyes of Faith’: Visuelle Evidenz und Übersinnliches in Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George und anderen neo-viktorianischen Detektivromanen
- Passion, Plainness, Allegory: Frank Chin, American Literary Tradition, and the Question of Style
- Visualised Incomprehensibility of Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Buchbesprechungen
- Bucheingänge
- Die Autoren dieses Heftes
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Inhalt
- Editorial
- Language and the Edges of Humanity: Orang-Utans and Wild Girls in Monboddo and Peacock
- Staging Restoration England in the Post-Heritage Theatre Film: Gender and Power in Stage Beauty and The Libertine
- ‘The Gift of Seeing’ – ‘The Eyes of Faith’: Visuelle Evidenz und Übersinnliches in Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George und anderen neo-viktorianischen Detektivromanen
- Passion, Plainness, Allegory: Frank Chin, American Literary Tradition, and the Question of Style
- Visualised Incomprehensibility of Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
- Buchbesprechungen
- Bucheingänge
- Die Autoren dieses Heftes
