Table of Contents for Dancing Through Time:Western Social Dance in Literature, 1400-1918

Table of Contents for
Dancing Through Time
Western Social Dance in Literature, 1400 - 1918 (Selections)
Compiled by Allison Thompson

1400 to 1650 | 1651 to 1759 | 1760-1799 | 1800-1836 | 1837-1869 | 1870-1899 | 1900-1918

From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance: 1400 to 1650

Selections by Geoffrey Chaucer, Thoinet Arbeau, Ben Johnson, Francis Bacon, Miguel Cervantes, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Thomas Heywood, Sir John Davies & Anonymous.

"A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech."
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605.

The Restoration of Pleasure: 1651 to 1759

Selections by John Playford, P[ierre] Rameau, Samuel Pepys, Moliere, William Wycherley, Soame Jenyns, Eustace Budgell, Richard Lovelace, Lord Chesterfield, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Robert Herrick, Thomas Hall & Anonymous.

"True ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,

As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
'Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,

The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense."

Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism," 1711

The Age of Reason: 1760 to 1799

Selections by Giovanni Gallini, Frances Burney, Richard Sheridan, Tobias Smollett, Oliver Goldsmith, Laurence Sterne and J. Von Goethe.

"To sing well and dance well are accomplishments which advance one very little in the world. (Qui bien chante et bien danse fait un metier qui peu advance.)"

Jean Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (after 1778)

The Regency: 1800 to 1836
Selections by Thomas Wilson, Thomas Moore, Jane Austen, Pierce Egan, Lord Byron and Charles Dickens.

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successfully, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;--but when a beginning is made--when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it must be a very heavy set [of people] that does not ask for more."
Jane Austen, Emma, 1816.

In the Reign of the Young Queen: 1837 to 1869

Selections by Gustave Flaubert, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Surtees, Catherine Beecher, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll.
"These sort of boobies think that people come to balls to do nothing but dance; whereas everyone knows that the real business of a ball is either to look out for a wife, to look after a wife, or to look after somebody else's wife."
R.S. Surtees, Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds, 1865.

The Gilded Age: 1870 to 1899

Selections by Tolstoy, Della Lutes, Louisa May Alcott, Fred. Loring, "Two Amateur Leaders", Palmer & Ward and the Rev. Charles B. Goss.

"After the ball is over, after the break of morn--

After the dancers' leaving; after the stars are gone;

Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all--

Many the hopes that have vanished

After the ball."

Words & Music by Charles K. Harris, "After The Ball," 1892.

The End of an Era: 1900 to 1918

Selections by Vernon and Irene Castle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, P.G. Wodehouse, Mary R. Rinehart, Emily Post and Willa Cather.

"The Valse Lente might and doubtless did, drive people to conjugal infidelity, but ragtime, I verily believe, drives them to mania..."

Francis Toy, "Ragtime: The New Tarantism," 1913.