The Orient of the Boulevards: Exoticism, Empire, and Nineteenth-Century French Theater.

Publication: Comparative Drama

Publication Date: 22-DEC-00

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Angela C. Pao. The Orient of the Boulevards: Exoticism, Empire, and Nineteenth-Century French Theater. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1998. Pp. ix + 236. $39.95.

Angela Pao's The Orient of the Boulevards is an insightful exploration of the centrality of nineteenth-century French theater in the construction of the Orient in France. Pao cogently argues that French theater of that century deserves more attention as a site for the analysis of colonial and imperialist discourse than it routinely receives from critics of French literature. Like the novel, it was an integral part of the creative fictions implicated in the construction of notions of race, ethnicity, and national belonging in France. Focusing on a number of melodramatic plays, the author examines theatrical representations of the Orient and demonstrates how theater participated in the reproduction and formulation of Orientalist discourse. In doing this, she draws upon archival resources o f play scripts, critical reviews, censorship reports, contemporary theories of the theater and cultural studies. With its treatment of the cultural, nationalist, and racial issues that subtext the plays, Pao's book begins to do some of the work that has so far been largely ignored in studies of melodrama.

Poa carefully examines the relationship between theater and the French State and notes that it was difficult to uncouple theater and politics. She goes on to...

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