Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:09, 12 August 2006

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It is ready. Any passing horseman may nominate it for Featured Article status, if she or he wishes, but I vowed not to do so, myself, after the monster of Augustan literature. For whatever it's worth, this article pursues an independent thesis from that. Instead of trying to provide a strict narrative of "then this happened, then this, then this," it tries to show the contours of a dramatic evolution from courtliness in the Restoration to largely vaccuous domestic drama in the 19th century. How is it that "there is no Augustan drama?" How did this amazingly potent dramatic tradition of the Restoration give way to 'amusing' plays and the adventures and further adventures of Pollyanna? What knocked the wind out of the sails, and why did the audiences turn away from a drama that we now consider great to embrace a type of drama we now consider insipid? If there is no right or wrong about it, what history and fashion conspired to make this happen? That's what this article attempts. I think it's a good survey of "this then this then this" as well, but it's not serving the same master as Augustan literature. Geogre 03:40, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Before you ask...

Since this article is about to go on the main page, I might as well address a concern that scholars might have. I treat Fielding as a Tory. Martin Battestin says he was a Whig. Well, Fielding was a Whig, at least nominally, but he was a Patriot Whig, if anything, and he was pretty clearly against Walpole. I know that he went to Tom Thumb with Walpole, etc. (the evidence presented in Battestin's biography of Fielding), but that's awfully shallow proof, if you ask me, compared with the text itself. After all, John Gay was pleased enough that Walpole liked The Beggar's Opera before he hated it. No author would have refused or said, "Ummm, Bob, that's you up there." I found nothing in Battestin's biography to convince me that Fielding was very Whiggish when he was a Whig, and his satirical gambits, like Henry Carey's, reiterate the Tory points. If there is more proof besides that presented in Battestin's biography, I'm open to hear it, and, of course, anyone may edit this article (the beauty of Misplaced Pages), but I was not ignorant of the view that Fielding was a Walpole-embracing Whig. I just don't buy it even a little bit. Geogre 13:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Deleted?

I'm assuming the article that goes with this talk page should exist, but right at the moment it doesn't. SS451 07:08, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

But now it's back. Well, good. SS451 07:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)