Restoration Comedy Crises of Desire and Identity [Hardcover]

What is Restoration comedy? What pleasure does it offer its audience, and what significance does it find in exploring that pleasure? Edward Burns here provides a new account of the origins and nature of Restoration comedy as a distinct genre. The book enlarges the usual focus with a wider range of writers than the conventional ossified canon taking in a revaluation of many rarely studied dramatists, a reconsideration of pastoral, and the instatement of women writers as major contributors to the culture of the age. It offers a substantial and original interpretation of one of the most intriguing of seventeenth-century literature forms.Preface - Introduction - What is Restoration Comedy? - Jonsonian Moralists and Caroline Decorum - 'A Lantskip of these Kingdoms' - 'The Scene, London; the Time Equal to that of the Presentation' - From 'Decorum' to 'Nature': Etherege and the Wits - William Wycherley - 'The Wits' Garden': Court Forms and Libertine Philosophies - Professional Dramatists - Thomas Otway - Aphra Behn - Marriage and the Comedy of the Nineties: Dryden's Amphitryon and Crowne's The Married Beau - The Etheregean Revival - Congreve - The Last Restoration Comedies: Farquhar, Centlivre and Steele - Conclusion: Newgate Pastoral; John Gay and 'The Beggars Opera' - Index