CESAR a comprehensive online repository of French Theatre resources in the 17th and 18th centuries

The primary aim was to produce a single, coherent listing of all known theatre and related performances in France between 1600 and 1800, searchable by date, title, location, genre and by the names of the people involved in whatever capacity. The database was to have an interactive web interface. The second aim was to make the entire structure bi-directional, i.e. to take advantage of the same web interface to permit members of the international scholarly community, after a simple registration procedure, to annotate, comment upon, extend and correct any field in the database. Contributions would be vetted by an editorial team of experts, using an automated email alert system, before appearing live on the Internet. It is all-inclusive, covering plays, operas, ballets and extra-theatrical entertainments. Details of titles, individual performances, locations, troupes, authors, performers and other theatre personnel, contemporary printed texts and the libraries where they are to be found are all cross-referenced and can be searched under eight headings. Each item may contain data or notes added by any registered scholar. The collection includes a searchable online repository of French theatre images 1600-1800 - 2004-2006 that supplements the initial online repository.

Project

Academic field

Drama and Theatre Studies

Modern Languages

History

Affiliation

Oxford Brookes University

Project link

CESAR a comprehensive online repository of French Theatre resources in the 17th and 18th centuries

Funders

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

TaDiRAH

Analysis

Meta: Project Management

arts-humanities.net

Principal investigator

Professor Valerie Worth-Stylianou

Principal project staff

Mark Bannister (former director); Sabine Chaouche (Director)

Start date

Sunday, July 1, 2001

Era

Modern

Place

Western Europe

Source material

The CESAR Imagebank is an interactive repository of images relating to the seventeenth and eighteenth-century French theatre. It includes all types of image: portraits of playwrights and performers, scenes from plays, plans of theatres, etc. We are grateful to the institutions that have generously allowed us to reproduce images from their collections: * The Taylor Institution Library, Oxford * The Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris * The Library of Trinity College, Dublin * The Harvard Theatre Collection * The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford * The Victoria & Albert Theatre Museum, London * The John Rylands Library, Manchester * The Library of the University of Montreal The database contains information on all aspects of the French theatre between 1600 and 1800. The scope is all-inclusive, covering plays, operas, ballets, fairground productions, street performances and other incidental theatrical entertainments of all kinds, whether they were performed or published or merely described in contemporary documents.

Data formats

Raw File Format (RAW)

Metadata standards

Publications

Conferences

* CESAR Conference, June 2004
The first CESAR conference was held at the Maison Française d'Oxford (UK) on the 21st and 22nd June 2004, bringing together over sixty specialists and theatre-lovers from six countries. The papers, in French and English, are published together with a tribute to Barry Russell and details of the musical Intermède given by Julian Littlewood.

* CESAR IMAGES Study-day, June 2005
A study-day on the CESAR IMAGES Project was held on 8th June 2005 at the Maison Française d'Oxford. We reproduce the text of the keynote paper delivered by Catherine Guillot (Université de Paris III) which provided the basis for much of the discussion during the day.

* CESAR Conference, June 2006
The second international CESAR conference was held at the Maison Française d’Oxford over three days (21-23 June) in 2006. The proceedings, including most of the papers given, are published in French and English.

* CESAR/Clark Symposium, September 2008
The third international CESAR conference was held in Williamstown, Mass., USA on 11-13 September 2008 with the generous collaboration of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. The papers given during the course of the three days – most of them in English – are published.