Papers by James Armstrong
Dickens Studies Annual, 2023
In Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens skewers the use of nature as a justification for vice, inst... more In Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens skewers the use of nature as a justification for vice, instead inviting readers to rise above their baser impulses, be those tendencies “natural” or not. This essay looks at how nineteenth-century discourses of America as a natural paradise influenced Dickens’s depiction of the land, its inhabitants, and the political institutions taking root there in the 1840s. The novel’s critique of the role of nature in American life reached a crescendo with Martin’s arrival in Eden, a town linked by its name to a pro-nature ideology. Dickens’s rejection of Eden is a rejection not just of the United States, but of what he saw as the naïve and self-interested acceptance of “nature” as a replacement for complex moral thought. This critique is reiterated in the murder plot involving Jonas Chuzzlewit and is central to Dickens’s attack on selfishness and the many evils it generates, including fraud, violence, and slavery.
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The Eugene O'Neill Review, 2023
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Dickens Quarterly, 2023
For Victorians like Charles Dickens, the Romantic poets were to be both lauded as heroes and depl... more For Victorians like Charles Dickens, the Romantic poets were to be both lauded as heroes and deplored for their loose morals, and no figure caused more consternation than Lord Byron. Though critics going back to Edgar Johnson have labelled James Steerforth in Dickens's David Copperfield as a "Byronic" character, a more fruitful line of inquiry can be found in analyzing how Dickens reimagined Lord Byron as Steerforth. Both figures were spoiled by doting mothers, lashed out at servants as children, became infamous for womanizing, and ultimately left England in scandal to die in the prime of life. In spite of all this, David remained in the thrall of Steerforth, just as the British public retained a fierce admiration for Byron. The tragedy of Steerforth re-enacts the ambivalent and highly charged relationship the Victorians had with Byron, the most notorious hero-villain of the Romantic era.
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SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 2022
Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Luigi Antonelli’s A Man
Confronts Himself both had their or... more Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah and Luigi Antonelli’s A Man
Confronts Himself both had their origin in 1918, as mass slaughter from the Great War, an assault on traditional values by the Russian Revolution, and the devastation of the flu pandemic created a fascination with the extension of human life. Both dramatists juxtapose immortality with the grotesque business of ordinary life. However, Antonelli sounds a traditionalist warning, while Shaw looks forward to unleashed potential. Though Shaw’s work strives for philosophical purity, it forfeits the powerful tensions of the grotesque, which seeks to live life even in the midst of death.
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SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 2019
This article examines the responses of business students to the 1941 film version of Major Barbar... more This article examines the responses of business students to the 1941 film version of Major Barbara. It argues that today's business students are quite receptive to the arguments of the play and eager to make comparisons with contemporary debates in business ethics. Due to the nature of drama, plays have a unique pedagogical potential to reach students and engage with them more fully. Shaw, in particular, provides especially helpful tools for teaching business students as well as students in other fields that typically do not have plays on their syllabi. The article suggests several ways Shaw's works can be incorporated into curricula outside of literary and theater studies to enrich the education of non-traditional future Shavians.
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Dickens Quarterly, 2021
Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop constantly borrows from the conventions of stage m... more Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop constantly borrows from the conventions of stage melodramas popular in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Rather than simply imitating the melodramas of the stage, though, the novel reworks them for its own purposes. By comparing the book to such melodramas as Douglas Jerrold's The Rent-Day, Henry William Grosette's Raymond and Agnes, and John Baldwin Buckstone's Jack Sheppard, we can see how Dickens developed, complicated, and even sometimes subverted the conventions of melodrama.
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Theatre Notebook, 2019
Toy theatres of the nineteenth century frequently depicted famous actors in specific roles, somet... more Toy theatres of the nineteenth century frequently depicted famous actors in specific roles, sometimes providing captions beneath characters stating not just the part being portrayed but also the star performer whose face and bodily manner were being copied. These toy theatres performed a valuable service for actors and theatre managers during the time they were in general circulation. They reinforced an iconography of celebrity that linked star actors with the roles they played, generating excitement around individual performers. They also helped to promote the star system that dominated British theatre through most of the nineteenth century.
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Keats-Shelley Journal, 2020
Paul Fort's production of The Cenci by the Théâtre d'Art provided a link between the Romantics an... more Paul Fort's production of The Cenci by the Théâtre d'Art provided a link between the Romantics and the nascent Symbolist movement of the 1890s. Georgette Camée, who played Beatrice Cenci, reportedly captured the "véhémence sublime" the Symbolists believed Shelley had intended for the role, providing a bridge between Romanticism and a dawning new era. Though the play was passed over for production in Shelley's England, it influenced fin de siècle Symbolists in France, catapulting Camée to critical renown, securing the premiere of Pierre Quillard's breakthrough play La Fille aux mains coupées (The Girl with Severed Hands), and helping to launch the directing career of Aurélien Lugné-Poe. The seeds planted in Shelley's Romantic tragedy thus bore fruit in the avant-garde dramas of Symbolism. Though The Cenci might not be considered a "modern" work, it helped later artists to pioneer the beginnings of what we now think of as modern drama.
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SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies,, 2017
P.B. Shelley’s drama The Cenci premiered in 1886, with a young Bernard Shaw handling press relati... more P.B. Shelley’s drama The Cenci premiered in 1886, with a young Bernard Shaw handling press relations. This production helped to shape Shaw as a playwright, firing him up with a new realization of the potential for serious drama. At the same time, the perceived failure of the play guided Shaw away from certain false paths, helping to steer him toward the creation of his first three “unpleasant plays”: Widowers Houses, The Philanderer, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
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Theatre Notebook, 2017
Sarah Siddons's retirement left a noticeable absence on the Regency stage. Audiences longed for a... more Sarah Siddons's retirement left a noticeable absence on the Regency stage. Audiences longed for a new tragic actress capable of illuminating their favorite plays. Theatre managers longed for a popular performer who could fill seats. Perhaps most importantly, dramatists longed for an inspiring muse willing to perform new plays that had never been tested. It was not until Eliza O'Neill made her London debut at Covent Garden that an actress appeared who rivaled the great Siddons. She exhibited a new style of acting that focused on dramatic emotional shifts and psychological transformation. Famous for playing sinful yet sympathetic heroines, O'Neill came to represent a new sensibility on the Regency stage that corresponded to the shift toward Romanticism.
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Romard, 2016
Christopher Marlowe’s contemporary Richard Baines composed a list of blasphemous beliefs supposed... more Christopher Marlowe’s contemporary Richard Baines composed a list of blasphemous beliefs supposedly held by the famous playwright. Many critics have taken the Baines Note at face value, contending that Marlowe was an atheist. A close reading of the alleged blasphemies suggests a different interpretation: that they reflect not Marlowe’s actual beliefs, but his deliberate attempts to antagonize anyone who would listen to him. Whatever his beliefs might actually have been, Marlowe was first and foremost a trickster.
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Scholars have long known that the nineteenth-century actress Eliza O'Neill was a significant fact... more Scholars have long known that the nineteenth-century actress Eliza O'Neill was a significant factor in Percy Shelley's decision to compose his 1819 tragedy THE CENCI as a performable, stage-worthy drama. Shelley's previous attempt at writing a play, PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, was a closet drama that defied any attempt at staging. Within months after composing the bulk of that piece, however, Shelley had penned a completely different work. Unlike PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, THE CENCI has been acted with great success on numerous occasions. It has attracted theatre artists as diverse as Aurélien Lugné-Poë, Karel Capek, and Antonin Artaud. What scholars have been slow to recognize is exactly how performances by a single Irish actress convinced Shelley to put aside closet drama and attempt a work so different from his previous writing. How was it that O'Neill came to have such an impact on a major writer like Shelley?
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Book Reviews by James Armstrong
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Papers by James Armstrong
Confronts Himself both had their origin in 1918, as mass slaughter from the Great War, an assault on traditional values by the Russian Revolution, and the devastation of the flu pandemic created a fascination with the extension of human life. Both dramatists juxtapose immortality with the grotesque business of ordinary life. However, Antonelli sounds a traditionalist warning, while Shaw looks forward to unleashed potential. Though Shaw’s work strives for philosophical purity, it forfeits the powerful tensions of the grotesque, which seeks to live life even in the midst of death.
Book Reviews by James Armstrong
Confronts Himself both had their origin in 1918, as mass slaughter from the Great War, an assault on traditional values by the Russian Revolution, and the devastation of the flu pandemic created a fascination with the extension of human life. Both dramatists juxtapose immortality with the grotesque business of ordinary life. However, Antonelli sounds a traditionalist warning, while Shaw looks forward to unleashed potential. Though Shaw’s work strives for philosophical purity, it forfeits the powerful tensions of the grotesque, which seeks to live life even in the midst of death.