A Cultural History of Pantomime, 1837-1901

哑剧是维多利亚时代英国最受欢迎、最经久不衰、最具影响力的戏剧形式之一。它是我们国家文化生活的一部分，也是自工业革命以来几乎每一代英国人经历的一部分。然而，在学术背景下，它几乎完全没有被分析和研究过。没有关于这种形式的学术调查研究，也没有关于它对维多利亚时代英国的影响的研究。现存的文学作品大多是古物和轶事（如a.e.威尔逊的《哑剧的故事》和《哑剧游行》）。学术上的忽视几乎肯定是由于人们普遍认为哑剧本质上是轻量级和轻浮的误解。然而，哑剧的研究提出了一系列实质性和重要的研究问题，本项目旨在研究这些问题。我们的主要目标是研究哑剧在多大程度上反映了当代政治问题，并为维多利亚时期英国独特的民族文化的发展做出了贡献。我们有兴趣研究戏剧审查对哑剧的影响，并追踪哑剧对当代和时事事件的颠覆性采取的程度，尽管在整个时期都受到张伯伦勋爵和戏剧审查员的控制。我们感兴趣的是研究哑剧是如何强化和颠覆维多利亚时代对性别关系的态度的，以及如何改变人们对男性气质、女性气质和性别关系的态度，其中涉及到哑剧机构，如男夫人和女校长。我们还将看看哑剧是如何在维多利亚时代的孩子的经历中，作为观众和表演者。我们将研究哑剧在维多利亚时代视觉文化中的地位，以及维多利亚时代音乐和舞蹈的历史，以研究哑剧中“姐妹艺术”的角色，并将哑剧舞台视为所有艺术的聚会场所，作为流行文化的一种艺术。我们对这些问题的回答将通过多种媒体进行发展和传播：我们将出版两本单作者专著，以及一本经过编辑的论文集。我们将举行三次专题讨论会，与广泛的专家参与者分享我们的研究，并请他们提出批评和评论。这些传播活动的参与者和观众将来自戏剧史研究、音乐、舞蹈和视觉艺术、文化史和维多利亚研究等领域。

Pantomime was one of the most popular, enduring and influential theatrical forms in Victorian England. It is a given of our national cultural life and has been part of the experience of virtually every generation of English people since the Industrial Revolution. However, it remains almost entirely unanalysed and unstudied in a scholarly context. There is no scholarly survey study of the form, nor of its impact on Victorian Britain. Such literature as exists is largely antiquarian and anecdotal (e.g. A. E. Wilson, The Story of Pantomime and Pantomime Pageant). Scholarly neglect is almost certainly due to the widely held misapprehension that the pantomime is essentially lightweight and frivolous. The study of pantomime, however, raises a series of substantial and significant research questions, which this project aims to investigate.Our main objective is to examine the extent to which pantomime reflected contemporary political issues, and contributed towards the development of a distinctive national culture in Britain in the Victorian period. We are interested to examine the effects of theatrical censorship on pantomime, and trace the extent of pantomime's subversive take on contemporary and topical events, notwithstanding the control of the Lord Chamberlain and the Examiner of Plays throughout the period.We are interested in examining the ways in which pantomime both reinforced and subverted Victorian attitudes towards gender relations, and changing attitudes towards, masculinity, femininity and gender relations, involving such pantomime institutions as the male dame, and the female principal boy. We will also look at how pantomime was figured in the experience of the Victorian child, both as spectator and performer.We will study the place of pantomime in Victorian visual culture, and histories of Victorian music and dance, to examine the roles of the 'sister arts' in pantomime, and consider the pantomimic stage as a meeting place for all the arts as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk of popular culture.Our answers to these questions will be developed and disseminated through several media: we will produce two single-author monographs, and an edited collection of essays. We will hold three symposia, sharing our research with a wide range of expert participants, and asking them for critique and commentary. Our participants and audiences for these dissemination activities will be drawn from the areas of theatre history research, music, dance, and the visual arts, cultural history, and Victorian Studies.