Academic Journal

Fontainville Abbey: William Dunlap’s forgotten Gothic play, the first American playwright

Bibliographic Details
Title: Fontainville Abbey: William Dunlap’s forgotten Gothic play, the first American playwright
Authors: Vanessa Cianconi
Source: Urdimento - Revista de Estudos em Artes Cênicas. 2:1-21
Publisher Information: Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, 2025.
Publication Year: 2025
Description: Fontainville Abbey (1794), by William Dunlap, inspired by Ann Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest (1791), is a play that has been relegated to oblivion. Dunlap is considered an outstanding historian, as well as the first American playwright and the first Gothic writer in the country. Forgotten by his peers, Dunlap was also forgotten by the academy. The aim of this article is to show how Dunlap's melodramatic dramaturgy and its dialogue with American literature’s seminal texts serve as a receptacle for memory and how this memory, in this case, the memory of the history of American melodramatic (Gothic?) theater, is transformed into phantasmagoria.
Document Type: Article
ISSN: 2358-6958
DOI: 10.5965/1414573102552025e0213in
Rights: CC BY
Accession Number: edsair.doi...........0de4b33b48eae5cb77648067c8c890dc
Database: OpenAIRE
Description
ISSN:23586958
DOI:10.5965/1414573102552025e0213in