Discourse: Essay on English and American Literature

Discourse: Essay on English and American Literature PDF Author: John W. Crawford
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004485252
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description

Discourse: Essay on English and American Literature

Discourse: Essay on English and American Literature PDF Author: John W. Crawford
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004485252
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description


Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage PDF Author: Lisa Hopkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317102762
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.

The Staging of Witchcraft and a “Spectacle of Strangeness”

The Staging of Witchcraft and a “Spectacle of Strangeness” PDF Author: Shokhan Rasool Ahmed
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1496992806
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
The Staging of Witchcraft and a "Spectacle of Strangeness": Witchcraft at Court and the Globe presents a new interest in Continental texts on witchcraft coincided with technological advances in the English stage, which made a variety of dramatic effects possible in the private playhouses, such as flying witches, and the appearance of spirits and deities in Elizabethan plays. This book also evaluates how the technology of the Blackfriars playhouse facilitated the appearance of spirits, devils, witches, magicians, deities and dragons on stage. The study investigates the visual spectacle of witchcraft scenes which intersect with the genre of the plays, and it also presents to what extent changing theatrical tastes affect the way that supernatural characters are shown on stage.

The Complete Works of John Lyly

The Complete Works of John Lyly PDF Author: John Lyly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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Book Description


Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642

Paratexts in English Printed Drama to 1642 PDF Author: Thomas L. Berger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139991620
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 2080

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Book Description
The paratexts in early modern English playbooks – the materials to be found primarily in their preliminary pages and end matter – provide a rich source of information for scholars interested in Shakespeare, Renaissance drama and the history of the book. In addition, these materials offer valuable insights into the rise of dramatic authorship in print, early modern attitudes towards theatre, notorious literary wrangles and the production of drama both on the stage and in the printing house. This unique two-volume reference is the first to include all paratextual materials in early modern English playbooks, from the emergence of print drama to the closure of the theatres in 1642. The texts have been transcribed from their original versions and presented in old-spelling. With an introduction, user's guide, multiple indices and a finding list, the editors provide a comprehensive overview of seminal texts which have never before been fully transcribed, annotated and cross-referenced.

The Witch of Edmonton

The Witch of Edmonton PDF Author: Lucy Munro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408140187
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
On 19 April 1621, a woman named Elizabeth Sawyer was hanged at Tyburn. Her story was on the bookstalls within days and within weeks was adapted for the stage as The Witch of Edmonton. The devil stalks Edmonton in the shape of a large black dog and, just as Elizabeth Sawyer makes her demonic pact, the newlywed Frank Thorney enters into his own dark bargain in the shape of a second, bigamous marriage. Torn between sympathy for Sawyer and Thorney and a clear-eyed assessment of their crimes, the play was the finest and most nuanced treatment of witchcraft that the stage would see for centuries. Lucy Munro's introduction provides students and scholars with a detailed understanding of this complex play.

John Lyly

John Lyly PDF Author: G K Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000587355
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
First published in 1962, John Lyly marks a shift from the traditional focus on John Lyly as the originator of the strange stylistic craze called Euphuism, and as the dramatist from whose plays Shakespeare deigned to borrow some of his earliest and least attractive comic devices to an author whose works are excellent in themselves. Critics have suggested that an independent reading of Euphues, and more especially of the plays, reveals an attractive delicacy of wit and a refined power of linguistic filigree quite independent of his influence on others or his capacity to illustrate the curious tastes of our forefathers. The eight plays – his most mature artistic achievements – are analysed in detail to bring out their relation to the tradition of court drama. A final chapter compares Lyly and Shakespeare in an attempt to show in operation the different traditions which the book has discussed. This book will appeal to students of English literature, drama and literary history.

Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe

Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Andrew D. McCarthy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317050681
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Engaging with fiction and history-and reading both genres as texts permeated with early modern anxieties, desires, and apprehensions-this collection scrutinizes the historical intersection of early modern European superstitions and English stage literature. Contributors analyze the cultural mechanisms that shape, preserve, and transmit beliefs. They investigate where superstitions come from and how they are sustained and communicated within early modern European society. It has been proposed by scholars that once enacted on stage and thus brought into contact with the literary-dramatic perspective, belief systems that had been preserved and reinforced by historical-literary texts underwent a drastic change. By highlighting the connection between historical-literary and literary-dramatic culture, this volume tests and explores the theory that performance of superstitions opened the way to disbelief.

Endymion the Man in the Moon

Endymion the Man in the Moon PDF Author: John Lyly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Readers
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description


Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500–1750

Women, Medicine and Theatre 1500–1750 PDF Author: M.A. Katritzky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351871544
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Well illustrated, accessibly presented, and drawing on a comprehensive range of historical documents, including British, German and other European images, and literary as well as non-literary texts (many previously unconsidered in this context), this study offers the first interdisciplinary gendered assessment of early modern performing itinerant healers (mountebanks, charlatans and quacksalvers). As Katritzky shows, quacks, male or female, combined, in widely varying proportions, three elements: the medical, the itinerant and the theatrical. Above all, they were performers. They used theatricality, in its widest possible sense, to attract customers and to promote and advertise their pharmaceuticals and health care services. Katritzky investigates here the performative aspects of quack marketing and healing methods, and their profound links with the rise of Europe’s professional actresses, fields of enquiry which are only now beginning to attract significant attention from historians of medicine, economics or the theatre. Women, Medicine and Theatre also recovers women’s roles in the economy of the itinerant quack stage. Women associated with mountebank troupes were medically and theatrically active at every level from major stage celebrities to humble urine sample collectors, but also included sedentary relatives, non-performing assistants, door- and bookkeepers, wardrobe mistresses, prop and costume loaners, landladies, spectators, patrons and clients. Katritzky’s study of the whole range of women who supported the troupes contextualizes the activities of their male counterparts, and rehabilitates a broad spectrum of diversely occupied women. The strength of this title’s research method lies in its comparative examination of documents that are generally examined from the point of view of either their performative or their medical aspects, by historians of, respectively, the theatre and medicine. Taken as a whole, these handbills, literary descriptions a