Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary

Kristin Flieger Samuelian is an Associate Professor of English at George Mason University. She is the author of Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy in Print, 1780–1821 (2010), as well as journal and anthology essays on Dickens, Austen, and Romantic periodicals.

"This lively study makes the innovative claim that dance served to conceptualize Englishness during the long Romantic period. With compelling evidence from popular publications throughout Britain, Samuelian shows that dance figured both as a healthful English recreation and a threatening foreign contagion. Ranging from Mozart and Emma Hamilton to Austen, Dickens, and Thackeray, and drawing adeptly on periodicals and graphic satire, this book presents a fascinating view of the dancing body as a contested signifier in Romantic-era controversies over politics, religion, and gender." Angela Esterhammer, University of Toronto"Most of us only fleetingly notice the dancers who appear in Romantic-era print culture. Kristin Flieger Samuelian centers a brilliant spotlight on these figures, revealing how they fuel debates over national identity. The Moving Body and the English Romantic Imaginary makes a significant contribution to both Romantic-era performance studies and literary analysis. Come for the capacious overview of dance aesthetics and politics; stay for the fresh reading of Fanny Price as spectral ballerina." Judith Pascoe, author of The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice

• Introduction: Dance in the Romantic ImaginationChapter 1: Theorizing the Dancing BodyChapter 2: Foreign Dancers in English Space: Theatrical Politics and Political Theatre in Romantic Print CultureChapter 3: Contending Aesthetics: Austen, Thackeray, and the Rise of the BallerinaChapter 4: Strange Disorders, Exciting Contagions: Dancing and Disease in the PeriodicalsChapter 5: Nationalism, Nostalgia, and English Country DancingCoda