Defense Date

3-22-2013

Graduation Date

Spring 2013

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

English

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Laura Engel

Committee Member

Anne Brannen

Committee Member

Susan Howard

Keywords

Celebrity, Dorothy Jordan, Edmund Kean, Long eighteenth century, Nationalism, William Henry West Betty

Abstract

In the discussions about contemporary celebrities, the femme fatale, the bad boy, the child star, and the wannabe have become accepted and even celebrated figures. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, actors and actresses who challenged acceptable strategies for celebrity behavior were often punished by exile, debt, disgrace, and humiliation. Some performers even faced a veritable textual and historical oblivion. Illegitimate Celebrity considers the careers of Dorothy Jordan, William Henry West Betty, Edmund Kean, and Margaret Agnes Bunn, and offers a historical genealogy of "illegitimate" performers who dared to break with social convention and struggled to define and redefine themselves according to strict social codes that dictated their behavior both onstage and off. By examining celebrity productions, portraits, caricatures, and performances as elements to producing celebrity, I demonstrate how the audiences used these public figures to create complex narratives regarding class, femininity, masculinity, marriage, nationalism, among others. Ultimately, the study of illegitimate celebrity reveals the role of celebrity in shaping these discursive structures and provides an important history for modern narratives regarding the role of celebrity in society.

Format

PDF

Language

English

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