Theater, War, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Empire

The first study of French theater and war at a time of global revolutions, colonial violence, and radical social transformation.

Logan J. Connors (Author)

9781009431217, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 November 2023

266 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.57 kg

'Informative, critically sophisticated and highly readable, the book is an excellent and timely contribution to its many overlapping fields of study - theatre history, French history, colonial history, military history - illuminating the complex interplay between armies and arts, hard and soft power, that remains as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth-century French world.' Jeffrey M. Leichman, L'Esprit Créateur

This is the first study of French theater and war at a time of global revolutions, colonial violence, and radical social transformation. Analyzing France and its largest Caribbean colony (Saint-Domingue), and spanning the Old Regime and Revolution, Logan Connors presents an ambitious, richly interdisciplinary argument, grounded in theater and performance studies, literary analysis of drama, and cultural, military, and gender history. Demonstrating how war and soldiering catalyzed new drama types and fostered theater's expansion into France's geographical and social peripheries, the study also shows how theater emerged as a dynamic space in which military practices could be re-imagined. This major scholarly intervention provides unparalleled insight into theater's engagement with international and domestic war efforts during a transformational period in global history.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of abbreviations
Introduction: performance, revolution, and the military-theatrical complex
1. From tragédie nationale to pièce militaire: Pierre-Laurent de Belloy's Le Siège de Calais
2. Military masculinities, dramaturgical manipulation, and the desertion play
3. Performing on the periphery: Military-theatrical experiences at the Théâtre de la Marine (Brest) and the Comédie du Cap (Cap-Français)
4. Total theater for total war: military dramas and performances of the French revolution
5. Femmes soldats and militarized domesticity: women at war in French revolutionary theater
Conclusion: the military-theatrical complex of revolutionary Saint-Domingue
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]