Jennifer Higginbotham
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748655908
- eISBN:
- 9780748684397
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748655908.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category ...
More
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category of the ‘girl’ played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. Girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare’s late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult “roaring girls” in city comedies, and this monograph offers the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the ‘girl.’Less
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system in England, challenging the widespread assumption that the category of the ‘girl’ played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. Girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare’s late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult “roaring girls” in city comedies, and this monograph offers the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the ‘girl.’
Jane Hwang Degenhardt
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640843
- eISBN:
- 9780748651597
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640843.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam ...
More
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.Less
This book explores the theme of Christian conversion to Islam in twelve early-modern English plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Massinger and others. In these works, conversion from Christianity to Islam is represented as both erotic and tragic: as a sexual seduction and a fate worse than death. The book examines the theatre's treatment of the intercourse between the Christian and Islamic faiths to reveal connections between sexuality, race and confessional identity in early modern English drama and culture. In addition, it shows how England's encounter with Islam reanimated post-Reformation debates about the embodiment of Christian faith. As the book compellingly demonstrates, the erotics of conversion added fuel to the fires of controversies over Pauline universalism, Christian martyrdom, the efficacy of relics and rituals and the ideals of the Knights of Malta.
Virginia Lee Strain
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474416290
- eISBN:
- 9781474444903
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474416290.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies ...
More
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies characterise the law as a force of coercion and subjugation, this book instead treats in greater depth the law’s own vulnerability, both to corruption and to correction. The dominance of law in early modern life made its failings and improvements of widespread concern: it was a regular and popular focus of criticism. The terms and techniques of legal reform provided modes of analysis through which legal authorities and literary writers alike evaluated form and character. Legal reform, together with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from it, were represented by courtly, coterie, and professional writers. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Gray’s Inn Christmas revels of 1594-5, Donne’s ‘Satyre V’, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale all examine the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of legal reform’s contribution to local and national governance.Less
This book investigates rhetorical and representational practices that were used to monitor English law at the turn of the seventeenth century. While the majority of Law and Literature studies characterise the law as a force of coercion and subjugation, this book instead treats in greater depth the law’s own vulnerability, both to corruption and to correction. The dominance of law in early modern life made its failings and improvements of widespread concern: it was a regular and popular focus of criticism. The terms and techniques of legal reform provided modes of analysis through which legal authorities and literary writers alike evaluated form and character. Legal reform, together with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from it, were represented by courtly, coterie, and professional writers. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the Gray’s Inn Christmas revels of 1594-5, Donne’s ‘Satyre V’, and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale all examine the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of legal reform’s contribution to local and national governance.
James Kuzner
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642533
- eISBN:
- 9780748651580
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642533.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate ...
More
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.Less
Studies of the republican legacy have proliferated in recent years, always to argue for a polity that cultivates the virtues, protections, and entitlements which foster the self's ability to simulate an invulnerable existence. This study of writing by Spenser, Shakespeare, Marvell, and Milton presents a genealogy for the modern self in which its republican origins can be understood far more radically. The author analyses Renaissance literary texts in the context of classical, early modern, and contemporary political thought to add to how we think about selfhood in the present. The book also offers illuminating new readings of the place that English Renaissance figures occupy in histories of friendship, the public sphere, and selfhood more generally. The study draws radical and republican thought into sustained conversation, and locates a republic for which vulnerability is, unexpectedly, as much what community has to offer as it is what community guards against. The book questions whether vulnerability is the evil we so often believe it to be, at a time when the drive to safeguard citizens has gathered enough momentum to justify almost any state action.
George Oppitz-Trotman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474441711
- eISBN:
- 9781474465069
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474441711.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Charting a new course between performance studies and literary criticism, this book discovers a poetics of figuration in English tragic drama. It demonstrates that our recognition of the dramatic ...
More
Charting a new course between performance studies and literary criticism, this book discovers a poetics of figuration in English tragic drama. It demonstrates that our recognition of the dramatic person in printed drama of the early modern period is involved in the terms on which those plays were first realized in the theatre. Since many such tragedies challenge and confuse the straightforward discernment of dramatic character, a strong distinction between performance studies and literary criticism breaks down in the course of an attentive reading. In the past this problem of recognition was artificially resolved or ignored so as to launch various sorts of moral interpretation. In fact, the ethical and political difficulty of revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi is inseparable from the difficulty of discerning human shapes in the theatre and on the page. Moreover, the epistemological issues created by these games of personation have been inadequately addressed by historicist criticism purporting to unearth the social, religious, and political impulsions of Shakespearean drama. Intervening in a wide range of current debates within early modern studies, The Origins of English Revenge Tragedyholds that the origins of English tragic drama cannot be understood without considering how the common player appears in the play.Less
Charting a new course between performance studies and literary criticism, this book discovers a poetics of figuration in English tragic drama. It demonstrates that our recognition of the dramatic person in printed drama of the early modern period is involved in the terms on which those plays were first realized in the theatre. Since many such tragedies challenge and confuse the straightforward discernment of dramatic character, a strong distinction between performance studies and literary criticism breaks down in the course of an attentive reading. In the past this problem of recognition was artificially resolved or ignored so as to launch various sorts of moral interpretation. In fact, the ethical and political difficulty of revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi is inseparable from the difficulty of discerning human shapes in the theatre and on the page. Moreover, the epistemological issues created by these games of personation have been inadequately addressed by historicist criticism purporting to unearth the social, religious, and political impulsions of Shakespearean drama. Intervening in a wide range of current debates within early modern studies, The Origins of English Revenge Tragedyholds that the origins of English tragic drama cannot be understood without considering how the common player appears in the play.
Margaret Healy and Thomas Healy
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638734
- eISBN:
- 9780748651573
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638734.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This collection of essays asserts the centrality of historical understanding in shaping critical vision. It explores the dynamic cultural, intellectual, and social processes that moulded literary ...
More
This collection of essays asserts the centrality of historical understanding in shaping critical vision. It explores the dynamic cultural, intellectual, and social processes that moulded literary writing in the Renaissance. Attentive to the complexities that we confront in our attempts to understand the past, the book explores important relations among literary form and material and imaginative culture which compel our attention in the twenty-first century. Addressing three crucial areas at the forefront of current academic inquiry – ‘Making Writing: Form, Rhetoric, and Print Culture’, ‘Shaping Communities: Textual Spaces, Mapping History’, and ‘Embodying Change: Psychic and Somatic Performances’ – it is relevant to all those who study and teach Renaissance literature, history, and culture. Contributors include Danielle Clarke, Andrew Hadfield, Margaret Healy, Thomas Healy, Bernhard Klein, Michelle O'Callaghan, Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards, Michael Schoenfeldt, William Sherman, Alan Stewart, and Susan Wiseman.Less
This collection of essays asserts the centrality of historical understanding in shaping critical vision. It explores the dynamic cultural, intellectual, and social processes that moulded literary writing in the Renaissance. Attentive to the complexities that we confront in our attempts to understand the past, the book explores important relations among literary form and material and imaginative culture which compel our attention in the twenty-first century. Addressing three crucial areas at the forefront of current academic inquiry – ‘Making Writing: Form, Rhetoric, and Print Culture’, ‘Shaping Communities: Textual Spaces, Mapping History’, and ‘Embodying Change: Psychic and Somatic Performances’ – it is relevant to all those who study and teach Renaissance literature, history, and culture. Contributors include Danielle Clarke, Andrew Hadfield, Margaret Healy, Thomas Healy, Bernhard Klein, Michelle O'Callaghan, Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards, Michael Schoenfeldt, William Sherman, Alan Stewart, and Susan Wiseman.
Isaac Hui
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474423472
- eISBN:
- 9781474444958
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474423472.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Through studying Volpone’s three bastard children – the dwarf, the androgyne and the eunuch – from the theoretical arguments of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, this book discusses how Jonson’s ...
More
Through studying Volpone’s three bastard children – the dwarf, the androgyne and the eunuch – from the theoretical arguments of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, this book discusses how Jonson’s comedies are built upon the tension between death, castration and nothingness on one hand, and the comic slippage of identities in the city on the other. This study understands Jonson, first and foremost, as a comedy writer, linking his work with modern film comedies such as the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Monty Python. It is a new approach to Jonsonian studies, responding to the current Marxist-Lacanian studies of literature, film and culture made popular by scholars such as Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar. While the book pays close attention to the historical context of Jonson’s time, it brings him into the twenty-first century by discussing early modern comedies with modern critical theories and film.Less
Through studying Volpone’s three bastard children – the dwarf, the androgyne and the eunuch – from the theoretical arguments of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, this book discusses how Jonson’s comedies are built upon the tension between death, castration and nothingness on one hand, and the comic slippage of identities in the city on the other. This study understands Jonson, first and foremost, as a comedy writer, linking his work with modern film comedies such as the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Monty Python. It is a new approach to Jonsonian studies, responding to the current Marxist-Lacanian studies of literature, film and culture made popular by scholars such as Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupančič and Mladen Dolar. While the book pays close attention to the historical context of Jonson’s time, it brings him into the twenty-first century by discussing early modern comedies with modern critical theories and film.