The Portable Theater

American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects All Subjects Literary Studies Literary Studies MOSTLY Theory

by Alan L. Ackerman, Jr.

Johns Hopkins University Press

Due/Published March 2002, 296 pages, paper

ISBN 0801869110

New in paper (S02)

In The Portable Theater, Alan Ackerman investigates the crucial importance of theater in the works of Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, William Dean Howells, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry James. Whether as drama critics, playwrights, amateur actors, or simply as avid theater goers, each of these authors thought deeply about the theater and represented it in literature.

"Alan Ackerman resituates American theatre in American literature, in the prose narrative performances of Whitman, Melville, Howells, Alcott, and James. He does so with an authoritative command of stage history and the theatrical representations that generally permeated American culture in the nineteenth century." -- Joseph Roach, Yale University

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

1 SETTING THE STAGE: Representing Nineteenth-Century American Theater

2 CHARACTER ON STAGE: Walt Whitman and American Theater

3 "ANOTHER VERSION OF THE WHALE-SHIP GLOBE": Narrative and Drama in Moby-Dick

4 THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY: William Dean Howells and the Rise of Dramatic Realism

5 THE THEATER OF PRIVATE LIFE: Acting Out in the Families of Louisa May Alcott

6 UNPACKING THE BOX: Form and Freedom in the Dramatic Writings of Henry James

Notes
Works Cited
Index