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Author Berlanstein, Lenard R., author.

Title Daughters of Eve : a cultural history of French theater women from the Old Regime to the fin de siècle / Lenard R. Berlanstein
Published Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2001

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Description 1 online resource (x, 300 pages)
Contents Setting the scene -- Theater women and aristocratic libertinism, 1715-1789 -- Defining the modern gender order, 1760-1815 -- Magdalenes of postaristocratic France, 1815-1848 -- The erotic culture of the stage -- The struggle against pornocracy, 1848-1880 -- Imagining republican actresses, 1880-1914 -- Performing a self -- From notorious women to intimate strangers
Summary Female stage performers haunted French public life in the century before and after the Revolution. This study delineates the distinctive place of actresses, dancers, and singers within the French erotic and political imaginations. From the moment they became an unofficial caste of mistresses to France's elite during the reign of Louis XIV, their image fluctuated between emasculating men and delighting them. Drawing upon newspaper accounts, society columns, theater criticism, government reports, autobiographies, public rituals, and a huge corpus of fiction, Lenard Berlanstein argues that the public image of actresses was shaped by the political climate and ruling ideology; thus they were deified in one era and damned in the next. Tolerated when civil society functioned and demonized when it faltered, they finally passed from notoriety to celebrity with the stabilization of parliamentary life after 1880. Only then could female fans admire them openly, and could the state officially recognize their contributions to national life. Daughters of Eve is a look at how a culture creates social perceptions and reshuffles collective identities in response to political change
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-293) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Women in the theater -- France -- History -- 19th century
Women in the theater -- France -- History -- 18th century
Actresses -- France -- Biography
Actresses -- France -- Biography
PERFORMING ARTS -- Acting & Auditioning.
HISTORY -- Europe -- France.
Actresses
Women in the theater
Toneel.
Acteurs.
Vrouwen.
SUBJECT France
Subject France
Genre/Form Biographies
History
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780674020818
0674020812