The Cult of Kean


Book Description

A Shakespearean actor who made his career on the public stage, whose sex life was known and discussed in Britain, America and France, Edmund Kean has inspired numerous writings, many biographies among them. But until now, no work has tackled the complicated and fascinating story of his literary appropriation, both in his own day and after his death. Dealing with the way a variety of canonical authors-including Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Dumas, Twain and Sartre-appropriated Kean through the centuries, The Cult of Kean traces a remarkable literary legacy. In each chapter Jeffrey Kahan discusses how many of history's greatest figures viewed Kean, and how these figures examined and discussed themselves in relation to-or projected themselves onto-a variety of constructions of the great actor. Kahan first explores the rise of Kean in light of rising democratic sympathies, then in light of Kean's equally autocratic dealings with playwrights, among them John Keats. He looks at Kean's sexual shenanigans at Drury Lane, exploring them in the wider social context of infidelity; and explores perceptions of Kean in America, during his 1820-1 and 1825-6 tours. The Cult of Kean cites many letters from Kean's mother and still others from his wife, none of which have been published previously. The study also features rare and interesting paintings of Kean, as well as depictions of how writers, actors and film makers continue to add to his remarkable literary legacy.













Transnational Gothic


Book Description

Offering a variety of critical approaches to late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, this collection provides a transnational view of the emergence and flowering of the Gothic. The essays expand on now well-known approaches to the Gothic (such as those that concentrate exclusively on race, gender, or nation) by focusing on international issues: religious traditions, social reform, economic and financial pitfalls, manifest destiny and expansion, changing concepts of nationhood, and destabilizing moments of empire-building. By examining a wide array of Gothic texts, including novels, drama, and poetry, the contributors present the Gothic not as a peripheral, marginal genre, but as a central mode of literary exchange in an ever-expanding global context. Thus the traditional conventions of the Gothic, such as those associated with Ann Radcliffe and Monk Lewis, are read alongside unexpected Gothic formulations and lesser-known Gothic authors and texts. These include Mary Rowlandson and Bram Stoker, Frances and Anthony Trollope, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Gaskell, Theodore Dreiser, Rudyard Kipling, and Lafcadio Hearn, as well as the actors Edmund Kean and George Frederick Cooke. Individually and collectively, the essays provide a much-needed perspective that eschews national borders in order to explore the central role that global (and particularly transatlantic) exchange played in the development of the Gothic. British, American, Continental, Caribbean, and Asian Gothic are represented in this collection, which seeks to deepen our understanding of the Gothic as not merely a national but a global aesthetic.




Great Shakespeareans Set I


Book Description

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.




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