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8 - Napoleonic Gothic

St. Helena As Center of the British World

from Part III - East India Company Peripheries and the History of Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2022

Kathleen Wilson
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Summary

St. Helena’s theatrical culture after 1770 reflects South Atlantic links with slavery, revolution and theater, soon to be reanimated by the arrival and residence of defeated emperor Napoleon in 1815. A transhemispheric crossroads where the British worlds of the north and south, east and west literally converged, the island’s theatrical and social life provides a finale to this study’s examination of theater and performance in the British empire. Three specific performances – one in Richmond, London, of St. Helena, or the Isle of Love (1776), and two in St. Helena, The Revenge in 1817 (to which Napoleon was invited) and Inkle and Yarcio in 1822, after the island-wide agreement ot abolish slavery, demonstrated the systemic nature of empire, the fictions of race that it perpetrated and the performativies of human difference that undermined its structures. The Saints were transucltural players in a wider, violent and acquistitive imperial drama, performers of a hybrid and syncretic Englishness that acknowledged its diverse sources.

Type
Chapter
Information
Strolling Players of Empire
Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833
, pp. 421 - 471
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Napoleonic Gothic
  • Kathleen Wilson, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Strolling Players of Empire
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108786317.010
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  • Napoleonic Gothic
  • Kathleen Wilson, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Strolling Players of Empire
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108786317.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Napoleonic Gothic
  • Kathleen Wilson, State University of New York, Stony Brook
  • Book: Strolling Players of Empire
  • Online publication: 11 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108786317.010
Available formats
×