Title: Acts of manhood : the performance of masculinity on the American stage, 1828-1865 /
Authors: Kippola, Karl M., 1966-
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Masculinity in the theater United States History; Theater and society United States History; Male actors United States.; Gender studies: men USA.; Male actors; Masculinity in the theater; PERFORMING ARTS Theater General.; Performing Arts.; Theater and society; Theatre studies USA.
Abstract: Exploring the performance of masculinity on and off the nineteenth-century American stage, this book looks at the shift from the passionate muscularity of Edwin Forrest to the intellectual restraint of Edwin Booth was not a linear journey toward national refinement; but rather, a multitude of masculinities simultaneously fought for dominance and recognition. Actors and audiences mutually constructed manly ideals unique to each splintered group, while simultaneously seeking national identity and communal belonging. Kippola integrates dramas, manly rhetoric, advice literature, and masculine performances on political and theatrical stages to trace fragmenting and competing masculine identities in antebellum America.
Contents: Introduction: a new race of men -- Act like a man: images and rhetoric of reconstructed manhood -- A glorious image of unperverted manhood: Edwin Forrest as masculine ideal -- A masculine identity worth dying for: the Astor Place Riot -- Decorum and delicacy: the feminized manliness of Edwin Booth -- Impossibly genial: the masculine transformations of John McCullough conclusion: affirming white masculinity by deriding the Other.