Overview

In Spectacular Men, Sarah E. Chinn investigates how working class white men looked to the early American theatre for examples of ideal manhood. Theatre-going was the primary source of entertainment for working people of the early Republic and the Jacksonian period, and plays implicitly and explicitly addressed the risks and rewards of citizenship. Ranging from representations of the heroes of the American Revolution to images of doomed Indians to plays about ancient Rome, Chinn unearths dozens of plays rarely read by critics. Spectacular Men places the theatre at the center of the self-creation of working white men, as voters, as workers, and as Americans.

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9780190653675

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Reviews

Engagingly written, featuring a thorough but by no means overwhelming scholarly apparatus, and reflecting keen awareness of the paradoxes that would lead the true blue Sons of Liberty of the 1780s to see themselves as wage slaves by the 1840s, Chinn's book is a welcome entry into the field of early American theater studies. She ably tackles the contingent nature of the class, gender, and racial identities that underpinned so much of the early history of the American theater -- and of the United States itself. -- Jason Shaffer, Early American Literature Chinn [provides] tantalizing glimpses into the elusive minds and possible motivations of the working-class men who filled urban playhouses. While these men yearned for entertainment, they also craved validation and possibly even guidance. In Spectacular Men, Chinn asks all the right questions, effectively drawing the reader into this complex period, challenging their assumptions, and complicating their understanding of the men and plays shaping each other. --Natasha Moore, 19th Century Literature CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (2018) ...Spectacular Men's focus crucially shows how a certain strain of masculinity could in fact come to appear monolithic, absolute, inevitable, and natural. That might be one of this study's more important contributions, unpacking as it does the building of normative identity formations. In the process, it becomes apparent that the story of American masculinity is also a story of how gender ideologies could be peddled for profit, reiterated until they seemed natural, and eventually experienced as pleasurable despite the underlying battery of anxieties and insecurities on which they were inevitably based. --Peter Reed, The New England Quarterly A challenging, informed critical effort with superb textual notes and bibliography, this volume makes an enormous contribution to theater and cultural studies. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --D. B. Wilmeth, CHOICE

...Spectacular Men's focus crucially shows how a certain strain of masculinity could in fact come to appear monolithic, absolute, inevitable, and natural. That might be one of this study's more important contributions, unpacking as it does the building of normative identity formations. In the process, it becomes apparent that the story of American masculinity is also a story of how gender ideologies could be peddled for profit, reiterated until they seemed natural, and eventually experienced as pleasurable despite the underlying battery of anxieties and insecurities on which they were inevitably based. * Peter Reed, The New England Quarterly * CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (2018) Chinn [provides] tantalizing glimpses into the elusive minds and possible motivations of the working-class men who filled urban playhouses. While these men yearned for entertainment, they also craved validation and possibly even guidance. In Spectacular Men, Chinn asks all the right questions, effectively drawing the reader into this complex period, challenging their assumptions, and complicating their understanding of the men and plays shaping each other. * Natasha Moore, 19th Century Literature *

A challenging, informed critical effort with superb textual notes and bibliography, this volume makes an enormous contribution to theater and cultural studies. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. --D. B. Wilmeth, CHOICE

...Spectacular Men's focus crucially shows how a certain strain of masculinity could in fact come to appear monolithic, absolute, inevitable, and natural. That might be one of this study's more important contributions, unpacking as it does the building of normative identity formations. In the process, it becomes apparent that the story of American masculinity is also a story of how gender ideologies could be peddled for profit, reiterated until they seemed natural, and eventually experienced as pleasurable despite the underlying battery of anxieties and insecurities on which they were inevitably based. * Peter Reed, The New England Quarterly *

Author Information

Sarah E. Chinn is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College at the City University of New York.

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