Restoration Drama and the Idea of Literature

Katherine Mannheimer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Rochester and the author of Print, Visuality, and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Satire: "The Scope in Ev’ry Page."

• Introduction1. Of Heirs and "Bold Purloiner[s]": Shadwell's Alternative Models of Literary Inheritance in The Lancashire Withces and The Squire of Alsatia2. "Can my Imagination feel?": Reading, Theatricality, and the Mind-Body Problem in Aphra Behn's The Lucky Chance and The Emperor of the Moon3. Textual Timelessness, Performative Time: Posterity in Congreve's Love for Love and The Way of the World4. "Take this sad Ballad, which I bought at Fair": Pastoral Performance and Print Capitalism in John Gay's The What D'Ye Call It and The Beggar's OperaConclusion

Mannheimer is a brilliant close reader, and makes an original and substantial contribution to eighteenth-century literary studies. Her interpretive framework grows organically out of the drama itself, and the critical and historical contexts that she gracefully weaves together make this a most engaging and beautifully written book.- Marcie Frank, Concordia University, author of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen