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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title "Furbish'd Remnants": Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0998z0zz Author Del Balzo, Angelina Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles “Furbish’d Remnants”: Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Angelina Marie Del Balzo 2019 Ó Copyright by Angelina Marie Del Balzo 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “Furbish’d Remnants”: Theatrical Adaptation and the Orient, 1660-1815 by Angelina Marie Del Balzo Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Felicity A. Nussbaum, Chair Furbish’d Remnants argues that eighteenth-century theatrical adaptations set in the Orient destabilize categories of difference, introducing Oriental characters as subjects of sympathy while at the same time defamiliarizing the people and space of London. Applying contemporary theories of emotion, I contend that in eighteenth-century theater, the actor and the character become distinct subjects for the affective transfer of sympathy, increasing the emotional potential of performance beyond the narrative onstage. Adaptation as a form heightens this alienation effect, by drawing attention to narrative’s properties as an artistic construction. A paradox at the heart of eighteenth-century theater is that while the term “adaptation” did not have a specific literary or theatrical definition until near the end of the period, in practice adaptations and translations proliferated on the English stage. Anticipating Linda Hutcheon’s postmodernist theory of adaptation, eighteenth-century playwrights and performers conceptualized adaptation as both process and product. Adaptation created a narrative mode that emphasized the process and labor of performance for audiences in order to create a higher level of engagement with ii audiences. Bringing together theories of emotion by philosophers such as Adam Smith and David Hume, and modern performance studies scholarship, I demonstrate how competing discourses of sympathy produced performance practices that linked stronger emotional response with theatrical artifice. One of the major changes in English stage adaptations, I contend, is a new emphasis on strong emotion and a new set of strategies for rendering feeling onstage. The Restoration tragedy’s emphasis on pathos significantly preceded the cult of sensibility expressed in the sentimental novel, as shown by Elkanah Settle’s transformation of the character Roxolana from virago to tragic heroine in his stage adaptation of Madeleine de Scudéry’s novel Ibrahim. Reading the English translations of Voltaire’s Oriental tragedies, I illustrate how the metatheatrical distance created by and eighteenth- century stage practices and Orientalist settings increases the opportunity for sympathetic exchange, by offering both the character and the performer as recipients simultaneously. This expansive vision of emotional sharing enlivens tragedy, but it also opens up the more dangerous possibilities of an uncontrollable contagion of feeling at a historical moment when contact with strangers increases. The exotic settings in adaptations of the Arabian Nights’ frame tale of Scheherazade paradoxically domesticate these stories of marital cruelty, unfamiliar aesthetics on top all-too-recognizable sexual violence. At other moments in the period though, as in John O’Keeffe’s adaptation of “The Little Hunch-Back,” those blurred boundaries between individuals and nations enable cross-cultural sympathetic identification along with their exoticism. In adaptations portraying the Orient, these settings provide a reflexive space for eighteenth-century English texts to explore questions of genre, nation, and feeling as British imperial power expanded but before European hegemony was a foregone conclusion. iii The dissertation of Angelina Marie Del Balzo is approved. Helen E. Deutsch Sarah Tindal Kareem Emily Hodgson Anderson Felicity A. Nussbaum, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Vita viii Introduction Adaptation and Eighteenth-Century Empire 1 Chapter One “Female Suff-rers”: Adapting Emotion on the Restoration Stage 37 Chapter Two “Heav’n’s Interpreter”: Voltaire’s Oriental Tragedies and British National Sympathies 76 Chapter Three Heads and Maidenheads: Adaptations of Scheherazade and Sexual Violence 119 Chapter Four The Arabian Nights on the Popular Stage 165 Coda Adaptation and the Imperial Century 196 Works Cited 201 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation exists because of the material and emotional support from my friends, family, and academic community. Words fail to describe how fortunate I have been in my dissertation committee. Felicity Nussbaum’s reputation as a researcher is matched only by her dedication to graduate mentorship, and I am deeply thankful for her time and energy. Her high expectations have made me a better writer and thinker, but I especially appreciate the compassion she has extended to me in moments of personal difficulty. I am indebted also to Helen Deutsch, who has always made me feel like she is in my corner. Her theoretical acuity has opened up unexpected avenues in my thinking and also inspired my first major project in graduate school. Our conversations have always simultaneously helped me think through tough questions as well as make me laugh. Thank you to Sarah Kareem for making me a Hume enthusiast despite my initial skepticism, for the advice given in many moments of confusion and insecurity, and for the best sloth care package a broken foot ever received. Emily Anderson’s work organizing the Long 18th-Century Colloquium has introduced me to the amazing southern California eighteenth-century community and she and Sarah have both served as models of how to be a kind and empathetic academic. Other academic support has come from Lowell Gallagher and Joseph Bristow who generously offered an out-of-field student time during the difficult first years of the program. Thank you to Eugenia Zuroski for providing professional and karaoke opportunities. This research has been funded by the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Library at UCLA, the Raymond Klibansky Collection Research Grant at McGill University, and the UCLA- Université François Rabelais de Tours exchange project. The UCLA Department of English has provided many opportunities to present this work to different audiences, and the participants in the 18th-Century/Romantics Working Group, 19th-Century Group, Early Modern Reading Group, and the Winter Athenaeum have all provided invaluable feedback. I would not have become a scholar if vi it wasn’t for my professors at Wellesley College, especially to Yoon Sun Lee and James Noggle for introducing me to the eighteenth century, and to David Ward and Nora Hussey for their long-term support. Thank you also to my high school English teacher June Yi, who first believed I could become a professor. It is rare to find a graduate student community as supportive as the one at UCLA. I’ve benefitted by the mentorship of eighteenth-centuriests Julia Callendar, Cailey Hall, Alex Hernandez, James Reeves, and especially Katie Charles and Taylor Walle. Thank you also to Nevena Martinović, my CSECS eighteenth-century theater buddy. Outside of the field, I am happy to count as friends Ben, Kaitlyn, Simon, and Lois Beck, Ellen and John Truxaw Bistline, Will Clark, Vanessa Febo, Jay Jin, Kim Hedlin, Robin Kello, Kirsten Lew, Efren Lopez, Jen and Haig McGregor, Craig Messner, Crescent Rainwater, Kiel Shaub, Sam Sommers, Gregory Toy, and Alexandra Verini. The drinks out, theater and movie events, homemade dinners, tearful phone calls, group texts, and Bachelor Nights have meant the world to me. Thank you the Sunset crew: Emily Davis, Justeen Kim, Katie Litvin, Betty Song, and Jasmine Wang; my Wellesley women: Claire Ayoub, Torie Doherty Munro, Stephanie Gomez Menzies, Nohemi Maciel, Jizhou Wang; and the Pommies: Johanna Arenillas, Nora Fulvio, Satomi Ginoza, Sua Im, Lisa Snider Jacobson, Alice Lo, Laura Marrin, and Elaine Wong. Special thanks to Appy Ayyagari for being my LA rock. My love to Daniel Fujimoto, still. My grandparents Mario Eugene and Joyce Del Balzo and Albert and Rosaria Nozzi have inspired me with their belief in value of education. Vi voglio bene. Thank you to my extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins for continually bringing me joy, and especially to Nicole Nozzi for sharing the California doctoral journey with me. Finally, I would be nothing without my Mama and Papa Mary and Carl Del Balzo, who have always been my biggest advocates. To my sister Sara: I knew before you were born that having a sister would be the best, and I’m happy to have been proven right. I love you three so much. vii VITA EDUCATION M.A. 2015, C.Phil. 2016 English, University of California, Los Angeles B.A. cum laude 2011 English with honors and Italian Studies, Wellesley College PUBLICATIONS “‘The Feelings of Others’: Sympathy and Anti-Semitism in Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 31, no. 4 (2019): 685-704. “The Sultan’s Tears in Zara, an Oriental Tragedy.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 55, no. 3 (2015): 501-21. Performance Review of Everything That
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