Description
Book SynopsisIn the final decade of the eighteenth century, theatre was amongst the most important sites for redefining France's national identity. In this study, Annelle Curulla uses a range of archival material to show that, more than any other subject matter which was once forbidden from the French stage, Roman Catholic religious life provided a crucial trope for expressing theatre's patriotic mission after 1789.
Even as old rules and customs fell with the walls of the Bastille, dramatic works by Gouges, Chénier, La Harpe, and others depicted the cloister as a space for reimagining forms of familial, individual, and civic belonging and exclusion.
By relating the dramatic trope of religious life to shifting concepts of gender, family, religiosity, and nation, Curulla sheds light on how the process of secularization played out in the cultural space of French theatre.
Trade Review'As well-written as it is meticulously researched, Annelle Curulla’s excellent first book not only illustrates the scholarly significance of Revolutionary theater, it also broadens our understanding of it.'
Yann Robert,
H-France ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction: the cloister and the stageHistorical contextApproaches and sources
1. Theatrical vocations: La Harpe’s Mélanie, ou la Religieuse (1770-1802)Mélanie’s instability: revisions to the text (1770-1802)
Mélanie in the salonsFrom salon to stage:
Mélanie in the Revolution (1790-1792)Reviving Mélanie (1796-1802)Conclusion
2. Changing habits: the monastic trope as secularisation, 1790 and 1791Prisoners of the cloth: impossible love in monastic dramaTaking it off: secularisation as comedyOver the line? Plays that failedConclusion
3. Dramaturgies of the cloister in Les Victimes cloîtréesPlaces of the forgotten: legends of monastic prisonsThe origins of the double sceneReading the double sceneConclusion
4. Mother–daughter plots in monastic dramaThe pregnant nun in D’Alembert’s
Eloge de Fléchier (1778)From sentimental to Gothic motherhood: Pougens’s
Julie, ou la Religieuse de NîmesMaternal heroism in Olympe de GougesRepublican family values: Chénier’s
Fénelon, ou les Religieuses de CambraiConclusion
5. Brotherly orders: soldiers, monks and libertines in monastic comedyPersistent libertines:
Les VisitandinesBrotherhood or else:
La Partie carréePigault-Lebrun: fraternity between the sexesConclusion
Conclusion: lessons of the cloister
Appendix 1: examples of the monastic trope in Revolutionary dramaAppendix 2: bibliography of printed examples of the monastic trope
Bibliography
Index
