Description: Alisa Zhulina shows how canonical fin-de-siècle playwrights interrogated the meaning of capitalism, staging economic questions as moral and political concerns and challenging contemporary socioeconomic theories within the boundaries of bourgeois theater.
Review Quotes:
"A remarkably fresh and engaging account of its subject, and will be of interest to anyone interested in the literary, artistic, and theatrical responses to the emergence of European modernity. It also signifies the growing maturity of Marxism within the discipline of theatre and performance studies, providing rich and nuanced readings of major works and a compelling account of bourgeois theatre as a whole, each situated within the full complexity of their social, economic, and political contexts." --Modernism/Modernity
"This dazzlingly written book breaks new scholarly ground with its thorough demonstration of cross-disciplinary interchange between theatre and economic thought. Zhulina writes intelligently, evincing an agile, articulate grasp of history, economics, and critical theory. In some of the book's most intriguing passages, she demonstrates that playwrights developed their signature dramatic devices through engagement with economic ideas. Theatre is inescapably economic, she suggests. One can learn much from this book, whether as a scholar of late nineteenth century European theatre and literature or as a student of culture's interplay with economics." --Modern Language Review
"[Zhulina] offers revelatory readings of the most familiar plays her theories touch (A Doll's House, Miss Julie, Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Cherry Orchard, etc.) before attending to the various afterlives of these plays . . . It becomes clear that any feature of our lives - material or spiritual, aesthetic or ideological, the world-historical or the everyday - could be drawn into the vortex we call "economics." Zhulina reminds us of the strength in such a richly economic perspective, which after all need not limit itself to markets and money." --Modern Drama
"Her central contention, that playwrights used theater as a forum in which to experiment with different economic ideas and models in the crucible of capitalist development, makes the volume essential for scholars of modern drama and students of economic theory more broadly . . . an especially energizing work." --Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism"I found myself repeatedly intrigued and delighted by the freshness and originality of Zhulina's analysis, to say nothing of the historical and archival sidelights with which she illuminates these canonical texts. I'm excited to incorporate these new angles into how I understand a canon of plays about which so much has already been written and taught. I will teach Ibsen and Strindberg differently after having read this book. Scholarship on theatre and economics is abundant, and Zhulina makes a significant contribution, tracing back to the late nineteenth century a theatrical archive of economic contemplation and consciousness-raising that long predates the entrenchment of neoliberalism." --Comparative Drama
"[An] ingenious interpretation of the interplay between the economics of the fin de siècle, on the one hand, and the evolution of modern drama, on the other." --Journal of the History of Economic Thought"Written from the perspective of both a scholar and a practitioner, Theater of Capital examines the ways in which capitalism set the stage for marketable new developments in European fin-de-siècle drama. Offering more than just a new lens through which to read major theatrical texts of this era, Zhulina impressively harnesses the dramas of our past to demonstrate how we might better address inequity in the theater industries of today." --Eugene O'Neill Review
"An extraordinary book whose scope and ambition are truly impressive. Alisa Zhulina works hard to overcome the academic silos that separate the humanities from economic theory by recuperating a more expansive notion of economics--that of the oikos--to put them in a productive exchange. All of this is executed with the highest rigor, intelligence, and creativity, and grounded in an expansive knowledge of the materials. There aren't many scholars today who can match Zhulina's linguistic and intellectual range." --Leonardo Lisi, Johns Hopkins University