English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom

ISBN-13: 9781472572806 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 256 str.

Peter Holbrook

Opis

This book's underlying claim is that English Renaissance tragedy addresses live issues in the experience of readers and spectators today: it is not a genre to be studied only for aesthetic or "heritage" reasons. The book considers the way in which tragedy in general, and English Renaissance tragedy in particular, addresses ideas of freedom, understood both from an individual and a sociopolitical perspective. Tragedy since the Greeks has addressed the constraints and necessities to which human life is subject (Fate, the gods, chance, the conflict between state and individual) as well as the human desire for autonomy and self-direction. In short, English Renaissance Tragedy: Ideas of Freedom shows how the tragic drama of Shakespeare's age addresses problems of freedom, slavery, and tyranny in ways that speak to us now.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements Preface Chronology of Authors and Works Note on the Texts PART ONE: TRAGEDY AND FREEDOM Introduction The Tragic Genre Tragedy: Freedom, Order, and Tyranny Freedom, Tyranny, and Order in the English Renaissance The Rhetoric of Disenchantment Going to the Theatre in Shakespeare’s London PART TWO: PURSUING FREEDOM IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY Gorboduc Tamburlaine, Parts One and Two Doctor Faustus The Jew of Malta Edward II Arden of Faversham Hamlet Othello King Lear Antony and Cleopatra The Revenger’s Tragedy The White Devil The Duchess of Malfi The Changeling ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index