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The conjurer unmasked: Literary and ...

Claxton, Michael Jay.

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The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain).

Record Type:	Electronic resources : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain)./
Author:	Claxton, Michael Jay.
Description:	424 p.
Notes:	Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-03, Section: A, page: 0913.
Contained By:	Dissertation Abstracts International64-03A.
Subject:	Literature, English. -
Online resource:	http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3086511

The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain).
Claxton, Michael Jay.

The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain). - 424 p.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-03, Section: A, page: 0913.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003.

This dissertation examines representations of the magician in literature and theater, in England and America from 1840 to 1925. It focuses especially upon the tension between the real-life conjurers' attempts at positive self-representation in their autobiographical writings and the usually negative treatments of magicians in artistic texts. This tension is explored in a variety of contexts---imperial, political, and literary---in order to demonstrate the pervasiveness of conjuring as a symbol of the tastes and anxieties of the age.Subjects--Topical Terms:

1017709
Literature, English.

The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain).
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100 1 $a Claxton, Michael Jay. $3 1951135
245 1 4 $a The conjurer unmasked: Literary and theatrical magicians, 1840--1925 (Elizabeth Gaskell, Robert Browning, Mark Twain).
300 $a 424 p.
500 $a Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-03, Section: A, page: 0913.
500 $a Adviser: Allan Life.
502 $a Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003.
520 $a This dissertation examines representations of the magician in literature and theater, in England and America from 1840 to 1925. It focuses especially upon the tension between the real-life conjurers' attempts at positive self-representation in their autobiographical writings and the usually negative treatments of magicians in artistic texts. This tension is explored in a variety of contexts---imperial, political, and literary---in order to demonstrate the pervasiveness of conjuring as a symbol of the tastes and anxieties of the age.
520 $a The most disturbing depictions of the magician appear in autobiographical accounts of Western magicians who traveled overseas on missions with either overt or implicit colonial aims, and in the writings of Western conjurers criticizing their Eastern counterparts. The magicians' efforts at positive self-representation often depended upon a strongly asserted superiority to and competition with the street magic particularly of South Asia. Rejecting the perceived status of India as the birthplace of magic, Western magicians shaped their travel narratives and stage personas to demonstrate a consistent superiority to Indian magic, yet examination of selected texts reveals a conflicted medley of racism, condescension, admiration, one-upmanship, and appropriation, between Victorian magicians (who designed Eastern-themed acts to delight novelty-starved Western audiences) and their Eastern counterparts. The Victorian magician's literal and metaphorical connections to Empire are further complicated by depictions of conjuring in the humor magazine Punch, which treats the figure of the magician as a potent metaphor for political and diplomatic deception.
520 $a Most importantly, this dissertation argues that literary works express a much more complex skepticism towards magicians, as these texts repeatedly unmask, convert, or disempower the conjurer, even as they confirm his or her enduring appeal. Close readings of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1854), Robert Browning's Mr. Sludge, the "Medium" (1864), and Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889) place these three works more firmly in the context of Victorian magic, to show how writers wrestle with the same questions that drew audiences to the magic show or seance: the difference between illusion and truth, the place of the supernatural in an increasingly materialistic world, and the contest between civilized technology and "uncivilized" hocus pocus.
590 $a School code: 0153.
650 4 $a Literature, English. $3 1017709
650 4 $a Literature, American. $3 1017657
650 4 $a Theater. $3 522973
650 4 $a Biography. $3 531296
650 4 $a Literature, Modern. $3 624011
690 $a 0593
690 $a 0591
690 $a 0465
690 $a 0304
690 $a 0298
710 2 0 $a The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. $3 1017449
773 0 $t Dissertation Abstracts International $g 64-03A.
790 1 0 $a Life, Allan, $e advisor
790 $a 0153
791 $a Ph.D.
792 $a 2003
856 4 0 $u http://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=3086511