The Uses Of Pageantry

What images shape Americans' perceptions of their past? How do particular versions of history become the public history? And how have these views changed over time? David Glassberg explores these important questions by examining the pageantry craze of the

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 1998 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, University of Birmingham (Shakespeare Institute), language: English, abstract: An Introductory chapter justifies the study of staged pageantry in terms of related research and acknowledges the aptness of the pageantic mode for the second tetralogy before glancing at pageantry within the contemporary social context. A brief survey of pageantry in Shakespearean productions from the Restoration to 1900 provides an historical context for the thesis which shows that 'pictorial' pageantry, though vilified and much reduced in scale compared with Victorian literalism, proved resilient even in the face of the New Stagecraft and cinematic realism. From the 1950s the intellectualisation of Shakespeare production which accompanied the emergence of the university-educated 'director, however, harnessed spectacle in the service of an interpretative vision that demanded of audiences a capacity for analogical thinking akin to the 'cognitive eye' of Shakespeare's own audiences. In an era of social flux and intellectual anxiety pageantry has provided a stable vocabulary for interrogating monarchal and political ideologies together with the vocabulary for the examination of the ritual basis of the human condition. Subsequently practitioners have utilised the meta-theatrical concept of pageantry and in a society increasingly defined through the visual emblem have sought to reach beyond 'image 1 towards understanding, thereby reaffirming the need to take theatrical pageantry seriously.

Restaging the Past is the first edited collection devoted to the study of historical pageants in Britain, ranging from their Edwardian origins to the present day. Across Britain in the twentieth century, people succumbed to ‘pageant fever’. Thousands dressed up in historical costumes and performed scenes from the history of the places where they lived, and hundreds of thousands more watched them. These pageants were one of the most significant aspects of popular engagement with the past between the 1900s and the 1970s: they took place in large cities, small towns and tiny villages, and engaged a whole range of different organised groups, including Women’s Institutes, political parties, schools, churches and youth organisations. Pageants were community events, bringing large numbers of people together in a shared celebration and performance of the past; they also involved many prominent novelists, professional historians and other writers, as well as featuring repeatedly in popular and highbrow literature. Although the pageant tradition has largely died out, it deserves to be acknowledged as a key aspect of community history during a period of great social and political change. Indeed, as this book shows, some traces of ‘pageant fever’ remain in evidence today.

Excerpt from A Handbook of American Pageantry Franklin through philosophy, Edison through his electrical wonders. Expression is power; that is, the sending out of impressions we have received. A thousand feel an impression Where one can properly express it. This ability may be acquired through right teaching and practice and concentration. To this end, the pageant is a training school in which a person may improve himself in conveying his thoughts and feelings through words, tones and action. The pageant on its dramatic side arouses emotion and will, and tends to evolve individual personality. Pageantry is opportunity for self-discovery. It typ ifies in a broad sense the love of life itself, and should stand, as does the American mag azine Life, for the finer old-fashioned sentiment and picturesqueness and shun screech ing modernism. The illustrations are selected from a thousand photographs, each one chosen for a special illustrative purpose or bearing upon the theme. Some of the reproductions are from scenes which do not conform to the definition of a pageant given in this book, but which were commonly and locally known as such. When a pageant was written by one person and staged by another, the name of the former is given because the author usually works for pleasure, the director for money. The writer of this book contemplates issuing a larger, more comprehensive work on pageantry, and would be pleased to communicate with persons having attractive or unusual photographs for sale. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Nowadays pageants often take the form of parades of effervescent young women competing for popular recognition in hyped up media events. However, these “beauty pageants” are a mere pastiche of the elaborate historical parades of the medieval period that took significant, social, religious, or civic events and their protagonists, as subjects. Pageants were historically characterized by resplendent costuming and elaborate processions that were often given to much pomp and ceremony. Pageantry has formed an important part of the civic life of most societies, both ancient and modern, serving a variety of cultural and political purposes. The use of drama and public spectacle as an instrument of civic, social, and religious activism has recently become the focus of renewed academic inquiry. The essays in this interdisciplinary anthology provide carefully researched insights into the phenomenon of pageantry over the centuries and across broad cultural boundaries.

Let your creative imagination go Pageant Wild! Fashion designer, red carpet expert and educator Nick Verreos, alongside his NIKOLAKI design partner David Paul, have teamed up to create a fresh and fun coloring book for pageant lovers and anyone interested in beautiful fashion design. In "The Pageant Coloring Book," Nick has hand drawn many magnificent beauty queens in fabulous gowns with elaborate details including intricate draping, bedazzled fabrications and Haute Couture-like designs. Use the sketches as a conduit of inspiration, allowing you to bring out your most extraordinary beauty queen dreams, creating your own fabulous Pageant Evening Gown Competition via this very entertaining and unique coloring book.