Rushing Into Floods

Staging the Sea in Restoration and Early Eighteenth-Century English Drama

By (author) Gunda Windmüller Series edited by Uwe Baumann Series edited by Marion Gymnich Series edited by Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp

Book cover: Rushing Into Floods

Extent: 341 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Literary Studies, Music & Performing Arts

Language: German

Hardback (Published)

(May 2012)

ISBN: 9783899719680

6.42 x 9.65 inches

Price: $99.00

In stock

The Sea on Stage – Colonial Expansion, Maritime Empire and English Drama.


The dramatic representation of maritime spaces, characters and plots in Restoration and early eighteenth-century English theatres served as a crucial discursive negotiation of a burgeoning empire. This study focuses on staging the sea in a period of growing maritime, commercial and colonial activity, a time when the prominence of the sea and shipping was firmly established in the very fabric of English life. As theatres were re-established after the Restoration, playhouses soon became very visible spaces of cultural activity and important locales for staging cultural contact and conflict. Plays staging the sea can be read as central in representing the budding maritime empire to metropolitan audiences, as well as negotiating political power and knowledge about the other. The study explores well-known plays by authors such as Aphra Behn and William Wycherley alongside a host of more obscure plays by authors such as Edward Ravenscroft and Charles Gildon as cultural performances for negotiating cultural identity and difference in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

  • By (author) Gunda Windmüller
  • Series edited by Uwe Baumann
  • Series edited by Marion Gymnich
  • Series edited by Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp