Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Drama

"Renaissance Drama, " an annual interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional canons of drama, the significance of performance (broadly construed) to early modern culture, and the impact of new forms of interpretation on the study of Renaissance plays, theater, and performance.

This special issue of "Renaissance Drama" on "Italy in the Drama of Europe" primarily builds on the groundwork laid by Louise George Clubb, who showed that Italian drama was made in such a way as to...

Through a study of the evolution of inheritance issues in seventeen tragedies written over the course of half a century the Corneille brothers, Pierre and Thomas, and by Jean Racine, Richard E. Goodkin questions the pervasive assumption that classical tragedy, a form written for the aristocracy, is informed exclusively by an aristocratic ethic.

Instead, a fresh reading of both canonical and noncanonical texts demonstrates that even the most formal body of literature produced by French classical writers expresses a conflict between a declining aristocratic hierarchy based on...

The unmarried "care for the things of the Lord," said St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, while married men and women "care for the things of the world." The doctrine that virginity for both men and women is superior to marriage remained strong in Augustine, who believed that consecrated virgins were "a greater blessing" than the married. Even the current edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia privileges the state of virginity because "it has as its object a superior good."

In Pure Resistance Theodora A. Jankowski surveys the history of virginity in Christian...

"A splendid piece of scholarly work. . . . Scholars of twentieth-century theater, whether Italianists or not, would find this book immensely useful."--Rebecca West, University of Chicago
This study examines the later plays of Luigi Pirandello--those he wrote for his actress and muse Marta Abba--in light of the recent publication of their correspondence. It traces the Nobel Prize winner's entire creative process, revealing how his perception of women shaped his philosophy of art and life, and highlights the structurally necessary shift from the male protagonist of the early and more...

In this fascinating study, Anthony J. Lewis argues that it is the hero himself, rejecting a woman he apprehends as a threat, who is love's own worst enemy. Drawing upon classical and Renaissance drama, iconography, and a wide range of traditional and feminist criticism, Lewis demonstrates that in Shakespeare the actions and reactions of hero and heroine are contingent upon social setting -- father-son relations, patriarchal restrictions on women, and cultural assumptions about gender-appropriate behavior. This compelling analysis shows how Shakespeare deepened the familiar love stores he...

"The evil that men do" has been chronicled for thousands of years on the European stage, and perhaps nowhere else is human fear of our own evil more detailed than in its personifications in theater. Early writers used theater to communicate human experiences and to display reverence for the gods governing daily life. Playwrights from Euripides onward sought inspiration from this interplay between the worldly and the occult, using human belief in the divine to govern characters' actions within a dramatic arena. The constant adherence to the supernatural, despite changing religious...

This play was one of the first examples of Indian literature to be seen in Europe; it attracted considerable attention (among others, from Goethe), and indeed pained surprise that such a sophisticated art-form could have developed without the rest of the world noticing. A good deal of that surprise will be revived by the hitherto untranslated Kashmirian recension.

Kali.dasa's The Recognition of Shakuntala is a play that scarcely needs introduction. Among the first works of Sanskrit literature translated into European languages, its skilful plot of thwarted love and eventual...