After Dickens: Reading, Adaptation and Performance [Hardcover]

A study of Dickens's hostility to theatre and theatricality alongside the huge performative potential of his fiction.John Glavin offers both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. Through close study of text and context Glavin uncovers a richly ambivalent, often unexpectedly hostile, relationship between Dickens and the theatre and theatricality of his own time, and shows how Dickens's novels can be seen as a form of counter-performance. Yet Glavin also explores the performative potential in Dickens's fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations.John Glavin offers both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. Through close study of text and context Glavin uncovers a richly ambivalent, often unexpectedly hostile, relationship between Dickens and the theatre and theatricality of his own time, and shows how Dickens's novels can be seen as a form of counter-performance. Yet Glavin also explores the performative potential in Dickens's fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations.John Glavin offers both a performative reading of Dickens the novelist and an exploration of the potential for adaptive performance of the novels themselves. Through close study of text and context Glavin uncovers a richly ambivalent, often unexpectedly hostile, relationship between Dickens and the theater and theatricality of his own time, and shows how Dickens' novels can be seen as a form of counter performance. Yet Glavin also explores the performative potential in Dickens' fiction, and describes new ways to stage that fiction in emotionally powerful, critically acute adaptations.Acknowledgments; Note on the text; Introduction; Part I. Set Up: 1. Dickens, adaptation and Grotowski; 2. lÓÀ