Babbage, F. (2023) "A real actress": Theatre and selfhood in Antonia White's Frost in may quartet. In: Wolfe, G., (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Theatre-Fiction. Routledge Literature Handbooks . Routledge , pp. 214-229. ISBN 9781032069906
Abstract
The novels of British author Antonia White (1899–980) have been mined primarily for themes of psychosis, sexual trauma, and spiritual faith and doubt, whilst simultaneously marginalized as “autobiographical fiction.” This chapter freshly illuminates her work by analysis through the lens of theatre, revealed as a trope shaping the Frost in May quartet: theatre manifests in formal productions and, metaphorically, to express a profoundly unstable sense of self. I argue that theatre's intertwining of supposed “oppositions”—self and role, real and pretended, felt and faked—explains its fascination for the author, synthesizing qualities she found terrifyingly antithetical. White's own encounters with the stage also reflect the changing face of British theatre in the twentieth century: from conservatism to experiment, towards a more holistic model joining realism and abstraction, creativity and technique, corporeality and the text.
Metadata
Item Type: | Book Section |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 Frances Babbage. This is an author-produced version of a chapter subsequently published in The Routledge Companion to Theatre-Fiction. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Feb 2024 12:57 |
Last Modified: | 14 Feb 2024 12:57 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Routledge |
Series Name: | Routledge Literature Handbooks |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.4324/9781003204886-21 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:208604 |
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Filename: Babbage - 'A real actress' - theatre and selfhood in AW's Frost in May quartet.pdf
