Enchantment and Dis-enchantment in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama

Enchantment and Dis-enchantment in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Nandini Das
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317290674
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This volume addresses dealings with the wondrous, magical, holy, sacred, sainted, numinous, uncanny, auratic, and sacral in the plays of Shakespeare and contemporaries, produced in an era often associated with the irresistible rise of a thinned-out secular rationalism. By starting from the literary text and looking outwards to social, cultural, and historical aspects, it comes to grips with the instabilities of ‘enchanted’ and ‘disenchanted’ practices of thinking and knowledge-making in the early modern period. If what marvelously stands apart from conceptions of the world’s ordinary functioning might be said to be ‘enchanted’, is the enchantedness weakened, empowered, or modally altered by its translation to theatre? We have a received historical narrative of disenchantment as a large-scale early modern cultural process, inexorable in character, consisting of the substitution of a rationally understood and controllable world for one containing substantial areas of mystery. Early modern cultural change, however, involves transpositions, recreations, or fresh inventions of the enchanted, and not only its replacement in diminished or denatured form. This collection is centrally concerned with what happens in theatre, as a medium which can give power to experiences of wonder as well as circumscribe and curtail them, addressing plays written for the popular stage that contribute to and reflect significant contemporary reorientations of vision, awareness, and cognitive practice. The volume uses the idea of dis-enchantment/re-enchantment as a central hub to bring multiple perspectives to bear on early modern conceptualizations and theatricalizations of wonder, the sacred, and the supernatural from different vantage points, marking a significant contribution to studies of magic, witchcraft, enchantment, and natural philosophy in Shakespeare and early modern drama.

Enchantment and Dis-enchantment in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama

Enchantment and Dis-enchantment in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Nandini Das
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317290674
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume addresses dealings with the wondrous, magical, holy, sacred, sainted, numinous, uncanny, auratic, and sacral in the plays of Shakespeare and contemporaries, produced in an era often associated with the irresistible rise of a thinned-out secular rationalism. By starting from the literary text and looking outwards to social, cultural, and historical aspects, it comes to grips with the instabilities of ‘enchanted’ and ‘disenchanted’ practices of thinking and knowledge-making in the early modern period. If what marvelously stands apart from conceptions of the world’s ordinary functioning might be said to be ‘enchanted’, is the enchantedness weakened, empowered, or modally altered by its translation to theatre? We have a received historical narrative of disenchantment as a large-scale early modern cultural process, inexorable in character, consisting of the substitution of a rationally understood and controllable world for one containing substantial areas of mystery. Early modern cultural change, however, involves transpositions, recreations, or fresh inventions of the enchanted, and not only its replacement in diminished or denatured form. This collection is centrally concerned with what happens in theatre, as a medium which can give power to experiences of wonder as well as circumscribe and curtail them, addressing plays written for the popular stage that contribute to and reflect significant contemporary reorientations of vision, awareness, and cognitive practice. The volume uses the idea of dis-enchantment/re-enchantment as a central hub to bring multiple perspectives to bear on early modern conceptualizations and theatricalizations of wonder, the sacred, and the supernatural from different vantage points, marking a significant contribution to studies of magic, witchcraft, enchantment, and natural philosophy in Shakespeare and early modern drama.

The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi PDF Author: John Webster
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408138131
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
The Duchess of Malfi is one of the major tragedies of the early modern period and remains popular in the theatre as well as in the classroom. The story of the Duchess's secret marriage and the cruel revenge of her brothers has fascinated and appalled audiences for centuries. This new Arden edition offers readers a comprehensive, illustrated introduction to the play's historical, critical and performance history. The text is modernised and edited to the highest scholarly standards, with textual notes and commentary notes on the same page for ease of reference. This is the lead title in the launch of The Arden Early Modern Drama Series, a series which offers all the depth and quality of thinking long associated with the Arden. The edition will be valued by students, teachers and theatre professionals.

Screening Early Modern Drama

Screening Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Pascale Aebischer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107024935
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Pascale Aebischer provides the only comprehensive analysis of early modern drama on screen, expanding the scope of Shakespearean performance studies.

Twins in Early Modern English Drama and Shakespeare

Twins in Early Modern English Drama and Shakespeare PDF Author: Daisy Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317195701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This volume investigates the early modern understanding of twinship through new readings of plays, informed by discussions of twins appearing in such literature as anatomy tracts, midwifery manuals, monstrous birth broadsides, and chapbooks. The book contextualizes such dramatic representations of twinship, investigating contemporary discussions about twins in medical and popular literature and how such dialogues resonate with the twin characters appearing on the early modern stage. Garofalo demonstrates that, in this period, twin births were viewed as biologically aberrant and, because of this classification, authors frequently attempt to explain the phenomenon in ways which call into question the moral and constitutional standing of both the parents and the twins themselves. In line with current critical studies on pregnancy and the female body, discussions of twin births reveal a distrust of the mother and the processes surrounding twin conception; however, a corresponding suspicion of twins also emerges, which monstrous birth pamphlets exemplify. This book analyzes the representation of twins in early modern drama in light of this information, moving from tragedies through to comedies. This progression demonstrates how the dramatic potential inherent in the early modern understanding of twinship is capitalized on by playwrights, as negative ideas about twins can be seen transitioning into tragic and tragicomic depictions of twinship. However, by building toward a positive, comic representation of twins, the work additionally suggests an alternate interpretation of twinship in this period, which appreciates and celebrates twins because of their difference. The volume will be of interest to those studying Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in relation to the History of Emotions, the Body, and the Medical Humanities.

Shakespeare and Lost Plays

Shakespeare and Lost Plays PDF Author: David McInnis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843263
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Explores Shakespeare's plays in their most immediate context: the hundreds of plays known to original audiences, but lost to us.

Food in Shakespeare

Food in Shakespeare PDF Author: Joan Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131713432X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A study of common and exotic food in Shakespeare's plays, this is the first book to explore early modern English dietary literature to understand better the significance of food in Shakespearean drama. Food in Shakespeare provides for modern readers and audiences an historically accurate account of the range of, and conflicts between, contemporary ideas that informed the representations of food in the plays. It also focuses on the social and moral implications of familiar and strange foodstuff in Shakespeare's works. This new approach provides substantial fresh readings of Hamlet, Macbeth, As you Like It, The Winter's Tale, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, Pericles, Timon of Athens, and the co-authored Sir Thomas More. Among the dietaries explored are Andrew Boorde's A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Healthe (1547), William Bullein's The Gouernement of Healthe (1595), Thomas Elyot's The Castle of Helthe (1595) and Thomas Cogan's The Hauen of Health (1636). These dieteries were republished several times in the early modern period; together they typify the genre's condemnation of surfeit and the tendency to blame human disease on feeding practices. This study directs scholarly attention to the importance of early modern dietaries, analyzing their role in wider culture as well as their intersection with dramatic art. In the dietaries food and drink are indices of one's position in relation to complex ideas about rank, nationality, and spiritual well-being; careful consumption might correct moral as well as physical shortcomings. The dietaries are an eclectic genre: some contain recipes for the reader to try, others give tips on more general lifestyle choices, but all offer advice on how to maintain good health via diet. Although some are more stern and humourless than others, the overwhelming impression is that of food as an ally in the battle against disease and ill-health as well as a potential enemy.

Games and Gaming in Early Modern Drama

Games and Gaming in Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Caroline Baird
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030508579
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This book is a close taxonomic study of the pivotal role of games in early modern drama. The presence of the game motif has often been noticed, but this study, the most comprehensive of its kind, shows how games operate in more complex ways than simple metaphor and can be syntheses of emblem and dramatic device. Drawing on seventeenth-century treatises, including Francis Willughby’s Book of Games, which only became available in print in 2003, and divided into chapters on Dice, Cards, Tables (Backgammon), and Chess, the book brings back into focus the symbolism and divinatory origins of games. The work of more than ten dramatists is analysed, from the Shakespeare and Middleton canon to rarer plays such as The Spanish Curate, The Two Angry Women of Abington and The Cittie Gallant. Games and theatre share common ground in terms of performance, deceit, plotting, risk and chance, and the early modern playhouse provided apt conditions for vicarious play. From the romantic chase to the financial gamble, and in legal contest and war, the twenty-first century is still engaging the game. With its extensive appendices, the book will appeal to readers interested in period games and those teaching or studying early modern drama, including theatre producers, and awareness of the vocabulary of period games will allow further references to be understood in non-dramatic texts.

Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama

Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama PDF Author: Pamela Bickley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472577159
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Where does Shakespeare fit into the drama of his day? Getting to know the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries offers an insight into Elizabethan and Jacobean preoccupations and the theatrical climate of the early modern period. This book provides an essential overview of some major dramatic works from their stage origins to today's screen productions. Each chapter includes: · a detailed analysis of a play by Shakespeare considered alongside a key work by one other significant playwright of the day (including The Merchant of Venice, Volpone, The Spanish Tragedy, Titus Andronicus, Othello, The Changeling, Romeo and Juliet, The Duchess of Malfi, Measure for Measure, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tragedy of Mariam, Doctor Faustus and Hamlet) · close reading of the text · discussion of early modern theatrical practices · a focus on one ground-breaking example of early modern drama on screen · suggestions for links with other early modern texts and further reading This book provides a route map to the very latest developments in early modern drama studies, fostering confident and independent thinking, making it an ideal introduction for students of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Early Modern Drama in Performance

Early Modern Drama in Performance PDF Author: Mark Netzloff
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 161149513X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Early Modern Drama in Performance is a collection of essays in honor of Lois Potter, the distinguished author of five monographs, including most recently The Life of William Shakespeare (2012), and numerous articles, edited collections, and editions. This collection’s emphasis on Shakespearean and early modern drama reflects the area for which Potter is most widely known, as a performance critic, editor, and literary scholar. The essays by a diverse group of scholars who have been influenced by Potter address recurring themes in her work: Shakespeare and non-Shakespearean early modern drama, performance history and theatre practice, theatrical performance across cultures, play reviewing, and playreading. What unifies them most, though, is that they carry on the spirit of Potter’s work: her ability to meet a text, a performance, or a historical period on its own terms, to give scrupulous attention to specific details and elegantly show how these details generate larger meaning, and to recover and preserve the fleeting and the ephemeral.

Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought

Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought PDF Author: David Armitage
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052176808X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Leading literary scholars and historians examine Shakespeare's engagement with the characteristic questions of early modern political thought.