Mimic toil

Eighteenth-century preconditions for the modern historical reenactment

Bibliographic Data

ID12592014
AuthorsSimon During (0000-0003-2182-0668, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume11
Issue3
Pages313-333
Publication date2007-07-05
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRethinking History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1364-2529 • E-ISSN: 1470-1154
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13642520701353157
OpenAlexW4255838487
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited15

This article analyses certain of the cultural and social conditions of possibility underpinning the modern historical reenactment. It places these conditions in the second half of the eighteenth century, when a new relationship between the past and present emerged: in effect, the present was then cut off from the past in terms that allowed the past to become the source for various modes of (often increasingly ‘authentic’) mimesis rather than continuity or recovery. This mimetic relation between present and past had both public and private dimensions. The article makes its case with passing reference to several examples: (i) the theorization of mimesis in Richard Hurd's secular essays; (ii) Uncle Toby's reenactments scenes in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy; (iii) the theatrical representations of contemporary events; and (iv) the development of the mock medieval rituals such as jousting tournament (part of the Mischianza) organized by Major Andre and fellow British officers in Philadelphia in 1778. Keywords: MimesisReenactmentEighteenth Century Tristram Shandy Richard HurdMischianza Notes [1] See Lowenthal (1985 Lowenthal, D. 1985. The Past Is a Foreign Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 125 – 184) for general material on some aspects of this. [2] See Gerrard (1994 Gerrard, C. 1994. The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth, 1725 – 1742, Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]) for an excellent account of relations between the Walpolean opposition and the retrieval of renaissance and medieval culture. [3] Hurd was among the most acute critics of James Macpherson's claims, just because of the attention he paid to imitation. See Sarah Brewer (1995 Brewer, S. 1995. The Early Letters of Bishop Richard Hurd, 1739 – 1762, Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer. [Google Scholar], p. 385). [4] See Pocock (1988 Pocock, J. G. A. 1988. Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar], p 198) for a discussion of the Scottish enlightenment account of chivalry, which mainly postdates Hurd and is not notably more sophisticated. [5] In Hurd's Dialogue on the Age of Elizabeth (in which he pits Arbuthnot's nostalgia for chivalry against Addison's Whiggish insistence on modern polish and liberty), the Elizabeth aristocratic tournament becomes an expression of gentlemanly virtue untarnished by the vicissitudes of modern luxury. Warburton's contributions to the historiography of romance are to be found, most easily, in a note to Love's Labour Lost in his edition of Shakespeare. See Evans (1932 Evans, A. W. 1932. Warburton and the Warburtonians: A Study in Some Eighteenth-Century Controversies, London: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 120ff). [6] The inspiration for this dialogue is to be found in a letter by Warburton to him: see Brewer (1995 Brewer, S. 1995. The Early Letters of Bishop Richard Hurd, 1739 – 1762, Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer. [Google Scholar], p. 251). [7] See Colley (1992 Colley, L. 1992. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707 – 1837, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) for a sustained discussion of Francophobia. [8] For Warburton and Sterne, see New (1982 New, M. 1982. ‘Sterne, Warburton, and the burden of exuberant wit’. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15(3): 245–274. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Cash (1986 Cash, A. H. 1986. Laurence Sterne: The Later Years, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 69). [9] It is interesting that George Speaight (1990 Speaight, G. 1990. History of the English Puppet Theatre, 2nd edn, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. [Google Scholar]) does not record this event in his standard History of the English Puppet Theatre and he has the Powell troupe arriving in London from Bath in 1705. [10] See Western (1965 Western, J. R. 1965. The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660 – 1802, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar], p. 387ff.) for a detailed description of the camps and everyday life inside them. [11] My information about this show is mainly drawn from John André's (1778) own account, which was printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, the Annual Register and elsewhere. Also useful is Morris Bishop's (1974 Bishop, M. 1974. ‘You are invited to a Mischianza’. American Heritage Magazine, 25(5) [Online] Available at: http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1974/5/1974_5_69.shtml [Google Scholar]) article first published in the American Heritage Magazine. [12] See Rosenfeld (1978 Rosenfeld, S. 1978. Temples of Thespis: Some Private Theatres and Theatricals in England and Wales, 1700 – 1820, London: Society for Theatre Research. [Google Scholar]) for descriptions of the elite private theatricals of the day, and which offers illustrations of costume. [13] For the Fuseli pageant, see Myrone (2004 Myrone, M. 2004. ‘Gothic romance and the quixotic hero: A pageant for Henry Fuseli in 1783’. Tate Papers, Spring [Online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/04spring/gothic_paper.htm [Google Scholar]). For Madame de Genlis's rose festival, see Maza (1993 Maza, S. C. 1993. Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], p. 73). [14] See von Erffa and Staley (1986 von Erffa, H. and Staley, A. 1986. The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 59 – 85) for a discussion of the context of the painting and the controversy

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