Early Modern Improvisations

Early Modern Improvisations PDF Author: Katherine Scheil
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040037410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
With a panoramic sweep across continents and topics, Early Modern Improvisations is an interdisciplinary collection that analyzes the relationship between early modern literature and history through lenses such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and politics. The book engages readers interested in texts that range from Shakespeare and Tudor queens to Anglican missionary work in North America; from contemporary feminist television series to Ancient Greek linguistic and philosophical concepts; from the delicate dance of diplomatic exchange to the instabilities of illness, food insecurity, and piracy. Its range of contributions encourages readers to discover their own intersections across literary and historical texts, a sense of discovery that this collection’s contributors learned from its dedicatee, John Watkins, a major literary and cultural historian whose work moves effortlessly across geographical, temporal, and political borders. His work and his personality embody the spirit of creative improvisation that brings new ideas together, allowing texts and figures of history to haunt later eras and encourage new questions. This volume is aimed at scholars and students alike who wish to explore early modern culture and its reverberations in ways that engage with a world outside the grand narratives and centralized institutions of power, a world that is more provisional, less scripted, and more improvisational. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC)] 4.0 license.

Early Modern Improvisations

Early Modern Improvisations PDF Author: Katherine Scheil
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040037410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
With a panoramic sweep across continents and topics, Early Modern Improvisations is an interdisciplinary collection that analyzes the relationship between early modern literature and history through lenses such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and politics. The book engages readers interested in texts that range from Shakespeare and Tudor queens to Anglican missionary work in North America; from contemporary feminist television series to Ancient Greek linguistic and philosophical concepts; from the delicate dance of diplomatic exchange to the instabilities of illness, food insecurity, and piracy. Its range of contributions encourages readers to discover their own intersections across literary and historical texts, a sense of discovery that this collection’s contributors learned from its dedicatee, John Watkins, a major literary and cultural historian whose work moves effortlessly across geographical, temporal, and political borders. His work and his personality embody the spirit of creative improvisation that brings new ideas together, allowing texts and figures of history to haunt later eras and encourage new questions. This volume is aimed at scholars and students alike who wish to explore early modern culture and its reverberations in ways that engage with a world outside the grand narratives and centralized institutions of power, a world that is more provisional, less scripted, and more improvisational. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC)] 4.0 license.

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies PDF Author: George Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195370937
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 617

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Book Description
V. 1. Cognitions -- v. 2. Critical theories

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 1

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 1 PDF Author: George E. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190627964
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 617

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Book Description
Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others.

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2

The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, Volume 2 PDF Author: George E. Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190627972
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others.

Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation

Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation PDF Author: Domenico Pietropaolo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474225829
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Analysis of improvisation as a compositional practice in the Commedia dell'Arte and related traditions from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Domenic Pietropaolo takes textual material from the stage traditions of Italy, France, Germany and England, and covers comedic drama, dance, pantomime and dramatic theory, and more. He shines a light onto 'the signs of improvised communication'. The book is comprehensive in its analysis of improvised dramatic art across theatrical genres, and is multimodal in looking at the spoken word, gestural and non-verbal signs. The book focusses on dramatic text as well as: - The semiotics of stage discourse, including semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of sign production - The physical and material conditions of sign-production including biomechanical limitations of masks and costumes. Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation is the product of an entire career spent researching the semiotics of the stage and it is essential reading for semioticians and students of performance arts.

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge

An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge PDF Author: Georgiana D. Hedesan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317182138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
History of science credits the Flemish physician, alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579-1644) for his contributions to the development of chemistry and medicine. Yet, as this book makes clear, focussing on Van Helmont's impact on modern science does not do justice to the complexity of his thought or to his influence on successive generations of intellectuals like Robert Boyle or Gottfried Leibniz. Revealing Van Helmont as an original thinker who sought to produce a post-Scholastic synthesis of religion and natural philosophy, Georgiana Hedesan reconstructs his ambitious quest for universal knowledge as it emerges from the text of the Ortus medicinae (1648). Published after Van Helmont's death by his son, the work can best be understood as a compilation of finished and unfinished treatises, the historical product of a life unsettled by religious persecution and personal misfortune. The present book provides a coherent account of Van Helmont's philosophy by analysing its main tenets. Divided into two parts, the study opens with a background to Van Helmont's concept of an alchemical Christian philosophy, demonstrating that his outlook was deeply grounded in the tradition of medical alchemy as reformed by Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541). It then reconstitutes Van Helmont's biography, while giving a historical dimension to his intellectual output. The second part reconstructs Van Helmont's Christian philosophy, investigating his views on God, nature and man, as well as his applied philosophy. Hedesan also provides an account of the development of Van Helmont's thought throughout his life. The conclusion sums up Van Helmont's intellectual achievement and highlights avenues of future research.

Thomas Vaughan and the Rosicrucian Revival in Britain

Thomas Vaughan and the Rosicrucian Revival in Britain PDF Author: Thomas Willard
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004519734
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Thomas Vaughan’s challenging books on alchemy, magic, and other esoterica make better sense in the context of the Rosicrucian ideas he introduced to English readers in the seventeenth century. This is the first scholarly book on his life, sources, writings, and subsequent influence.

Studies in Historical Improvisation

Studies in Historical Improvisation PDF Author: Massimiliano Guido
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317048938
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour—a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player—that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.

The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance

The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance PDF Author: Vida L. Midgelow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190925604
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1358

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Book Description
From the dance floor of a tango club to group therapy classes, from ballet to community theatre, improvised dance is everywhere. For some dance artists, improvisation is one of many approaches within the choreographic process. For others, it is a performance form in its own right. And while it has long been practiced, it is only within the last twenty years that dance improvisation has become a topic of critical inquiry. With The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, dancer, teacher, and editor Vida L. Midgelow provides a cutting-edge volume on dance improvisation in all its facets. Expanding beyond conventional dance frameworks, this handbook looks at the ways that dance improvisation practices reflect our ability to adapt, communicate, and respond to our environment. Throughout the handbook, case studies from a variety of disciplines showcase the role of individual agency and collective relationships in improvisation, not just to dancers but to people of all backgrounds and abilities. In doing so, chapters celebrate all forms of improvisation, and unravel the ways that this kind of movement informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, cognition, and technologies.

A Treatise on Acting, from Memory and by Improvisation (1699)

A Treatise on Acting, from Memory and by Improvisation (1699) PDF Author: Andrea Perrucci
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810860339
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This 1699 Italian acting treatise includes chapters on all kinds of staged productions, scripted or improvised, sacred or secular, tragic or comic. It also addresses enunciation, diction, memorization, gestures, and stage comportment, and it describes the details important to a successful commedia dell'arte performance.