Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires

Political Performance and Victorian Social Reform

• Author(s): Tracy C. Davis,
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Pages: 352
• ISBN_10: 1009297538
  ISBN_13: 9781009297530
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Drama / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh , History / Europe / Great Britain / General , Literary Criticism / General , Performing Arts / Theater / General , Social Science / Demography ,

Description:... This ambitious study traces the strategies of human rights activists to show how world-changing reform movements were shaped by women and men from modest backgrounds who were deeply attuned to the power of performance. Tracy C. Davis explores nineteenth-century reform campaigns through the pioneering work of a family of activists - prominent anti-slavery lecturer George Thompson, his daughter Amelia (the first female theatre and music critic for a British daily newspaper) and her husband, the political organizer Frederick Chesson. Engaging in some of the most important social struggles of the late Georgian and Victorian periods - including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide - this book reveals how two generations' insights into performance consolidated into activist tactics that persist today. Characterised by a skilful deployment of performance theory alongside deep and wide-ranging historical knowledge, this ground-breaking work demonstrates what 'dramaturgy' can teach us about 'history'.