Lothario's Corpse

"Lothario's Corpse is an innovative contribution to the study of Restoration and 18th-century drama. Gustafson has read admirably widely, taking as a remit not only dramatic texts but pamphlets, diaries, and press accounts that consider the figure of the rake or libertine as theatrical character type, political phenomenon, or both. In these provocative pages the irrepressible, unruly return of the rake-onstage and as performed in nontheatrical life-is a phenomenon beyond theater history that makes visible the unsettled dynamics of sovereignty and subjectivity in the long 18th century." -- Brett D. Wilson * author of A Race of Female Patriots: Women and Public Spirit on the British Stage, 1688-1745 *
"Lothario's Corpse exemplifies the very best of recent work on Restoration and eighteenth-century performance history. Gustafson's ambitious book not only rereads the figure of the libertine but also overturns a standard narrative in theater history, namely that the rise of bourgeois, sentimental comedy in the eighteenth century made earlier libertine fare unacceptable, on stage and off. The writing is lively and pleasing, and the scholarship commendable: Gustafson has clearly done his homework. Readers from a range of disciplines, from theatre studies to eighteenth-century literature, will benefit enormously from his erudition." -- Deborah C. Payne * editor of The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre *
"Gustafson's [give readers] engagement with the liveness of the Restoration." * Restoration Journal *
"Lothario's Corpse directs the reader's attention to the power of performance and to the expansiveness and breadth of history and its multiplicity-histories-when viewed through performance's lenses. [Gustafson's] readings and case studies of the Restoration libertine's many afterlives lift the curtain on the long-running repertoire of performances and reenactments that have shaped cultural fantasies about the British subject since the early eighteenth century. " * Eighteenth-Century Studies *