LIPSKI Jakub

University Professor in English Literature

Kazimierz Wielki University, Department of Anglophone Literatures

Research expertise

Eighteenth-century fiction and visual culture

Contributions

Practices Concepts

Masquerades in London

Masquerades – sociable assemblies of masked participants – developed into forms of public entertainment in eighteenth-century London, often welcoming crowds of participants in the fashionable centres of the metropolis, such as the Haymarket Theatre, Vauxhall Gardens or Ranelagh Gardens. The masquerade phenomenon provides insight into the category of personhood that was negotiated through a sociable performance of anonymity and new ‘selves’.