Contemporary American reviewers heralded Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion! or Life in New York (1845) as the first major “native comedy.” A satire of American enthrallment to European style, Fashion draws inspiration from Mowatt’s own cosmopolitan background and eccentric position within the upper middle-class milieu. The play’s focus on the characters’ misinterpretations, and its staging of fashion as a system of signs that need correct translation, testify to the author’s concern with language and its communicative dilemmas. Through the characters’ linguistic lapses and affectations Mowatt develops a critique of American middle-class conspicuous consumption, which she envisions as a speech devoid of content and lacking significance.
Vellucci, S. (2010). Fashion: Anna Cora Mowatt’s Transatlantic Comedy of Manners. In Translating America. Importing, Translating, Misrepresenting, Mythicizing, Communicating America. Proceedings of the 20th AISNA Biennial Conference Torino, September 24-26, 2009 (pp.104-111). TORINO : Otto Editore.
Fashion: Anna Cora Mowatt’s Transatlantic Comedy of Manners
VELLUCCI, SABRINA
2010-01-01
Abstract
Contemporary American reviewers heralded Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion! or Life in New York (1845) as the first major “native comedy.” A satire of American enthrallment to European style, Fashion draws inspiration from Mowatt’s own cosmopolitan background and eccentric position within the upper middle-class milieu. The play’s focus on the characters’ misinterpretations, and its staging of fashion as a system of signs that need correct translation, testify to the author’s concern with language and its communicative dilemmas. Through the characters’ linguistic lapses and affectations Mowatt develops a critique of American middle-class conspicuous consumption, which she envisions as a speech devoid of content and lacking significance.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
