Author: Anna-Maria Hartmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198807708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Greco-Roman mythology and its reception are at the heart of the European Renaissance, and mythographies-texts that collected and explained ancient myths-were considered indispensable companions to any reader of literature. Despite the importance of this genre, English mythographies have not gained sustained critical attention, largely because they have been wrongly considered mere copies of their European counterparts. This volume focuses on the English mythographies written between 1577 and 1647 by Stephen Batman, Abraham Fraunce, Francis Bacon, Henry Reynolds, and Alexander Ross: it places their texts into a wider, European context to reveal their unique English take on the genre and also unfolds the significant role myth played in the broader culture of the period, influencing not only literary life, natural philosophy and poetics, but also religious conflicts and Civil War politics. In doing so it demonstrates, for the first time, the considerable explanatory value classical mythology holds for the study of the English Renaissance and its literary culture in particular, and how early modern England answered a question we still find fascinating today: what is myth?
Author: Janice Valls-Russell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350125881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
Why does Bassanio compare himself to Jason? What is Hecuba to Hamlet? Is the mechanicals' staging of the Pyramus and Thisbe story funny or sad? This dictionary elucidates Shakespeare's use of mythological references in an early modern context, while bringing them to life for today's audiences and readers, at a time of renewed critical interest in the reception of the classics and fascination with classical mythology in popular culture. It is also a precious tool for practitioners who may not always know quite what to make of mythological references. Mythological figures, creatures, places and stories crowd Shakespeare's plays and poems, featuring as allusions, poetic analogies, inset shows, scene settings and characters or plots in their own right. Most of these references were familiar to Shakespeare's spectators and readers, who knew them from the writings of Ovid, Virgil and other classical authors, or indirectly through translations, commentaries, ballads and iconography. This dictionary illustrates how, far from being isolated, a mythological reference may resonate with the poetics of the text and its structure, cast light on characters and contexts, and may therefore be worth exploring onstage in a variety of ways. The 200 headings correspond to words and names actually used by Shakespeare: individual figures (Dido, Venus, Hercules), categories (Amazons, Centaurs, nymphs, satyrs), places (Colchos, Troy). Medium and longer entries also cover early modern usage and critical analysis in a cross-disciplinary approach that includes reception, textual, performance, gender and political studies.
Author: Noel Purdon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Classicism
Languages : en
Pages : 310
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Book Description
Author: Mary Bly
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198186991
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Queer Virgins and Virgin Queans looks at the early modern theater through the lens of obscure and obscene puns--especially "queer" puns, those that carry homoerotic resonances and speak to homoerotic desires. In particular, it resurrects the operations of a small boys' company known as the first Whitefriars, which performed for about nine months in 1607-8. As a group, the plays performed by this company exhibit an unusually dense array of bawdy puns, whose eroticism is extremely interesting, given that the focus of eros is the male body. The laughter recoverable from Whitefriars plays harnesses the pun's inherent doubleness to homoerotic pleasure; in these plays, 'the bawdy hand of the dial' is always 'on the pricke of noone'. Mary Bly's analysis depends on the nature of punning itself, and the inflections of language and the creativity that marked Whitefriars punsters, with special emphasis on the effect of puns on an audience. What happens to audience members who sit shoulder to shoulder and laugh at homoerotic quibbles? What is the effect of catching a queer pun's double meaning in a group rather than while alone? How can we characterize those auditors, within the convoluted, if fascinating, theories of erotic identity offered by queer theorists?
Author: Kenneth Muir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521523660
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
The first fifty volumes of this yearbook of Shakespeare studies are being reissued in paperback.
Author: Judith M. Kennedy
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847141757
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 484
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Book Description
This study traces the response to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from Shakespeare's day to the present, including critics from Britain, Europe and America.
Author: Heinrich F. Plett
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110201895
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 598
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Book Description
Since Jacob Burckhardt's Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1869) rhetoric as a significant cultural factor of the renaissance has largely been neglected. The present study seeks to remedy this deficit regarding the arts by concentrating on literary theory and its aspects of imagination (inventio), genre (dispositio of the genera), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria) and representation (actio), with illustrative examples taken from Shakespeare's works, but also on the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music. Particular attention is given to the rhetorical ideology of the Renaissance.
Author: John. M Mucciolo
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351742965
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002. This second volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues the work of assessing the present state of Shakespeare studies in the new millennium. Comprising 20 essays by distinguished scholars from North America, the UK and Australia, it is divided into sections on criticism and theory; text, textuality and technology; Renaissance ideas and conventions; and Shakespeare and the city. The essays address issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare, including those of gender and sexuality, the staging of plays, and historical research on matters such as the monarchy, language, religion, and the law.
Author: Lewis Walker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317943376
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 920
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Book Description
This bibliography will give comprehensive coverage to published commentary in English on Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition during the period from 1961-1985. Doctoral dissertations will also be included. Each entry will provide a clear and detailed summary of an item's contents. For pomes and plays based directly on classical sources like Antony and Cleopatra and The Rape of Lucrece, virtually all significant scholarly work during the period covered will be annotated. For other works such as Hamlet, any scholarship that deals with classical connotations will be annotated. Any other bibliographies used in the compiling of this volume will be described with emphasis on their value to a student of Shakespeare and the Classics.
Author: William R. Elton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780754602354
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
This second volume of The Shakespearean International Yearbook continues the work of assessing the present state of Shakespeare studies in the new millennium. Comprising 20 essays by distinguished scholars from North America, the UK and Australia, it is divided into sections on criticism and theory; text, textuality and technology; Renaissance ideas and conventions; and Shakespeare and the city.
