Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Renaissance

In this title, first published in 1985, Michael Bristol draws on several theoretical and critical traditions to study the nature and purpose of theatre as a social institution: on Marxism, and its revisions in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin; on the theories of Emile Durkheim and their adaptations in the work of Victor Turner; and on the history of social life and material culture as practiced by the Annales school. This valuable work is an important contribution to literary criticism, theatre studies and social history and has particular importance for scholars interested in the...

Joannes Burmeister of Luneburg (1576 1638) was among the greatest Neo-Latin poets of the German Baroque. His masterpieces, now mostly lost, are Christian "inversions" of the classical Roman comedies of Plautus. With only minimal changes in language and none in meter, each transforms Plautus' pagan plays into comedies based on biblical themes. Fascinating in their own right, they also bring back to attention forgotten genres of Renaissance literature. This volume offers the first critical edition of the newly discovered Aulularia (1629), which exists in a sole copy, and the...

This volume introduces 'civic Shakespeare' as a new and complex category entailing the dynamic relation between the individual and the community on issues of authority, liberty, and cultural production. It investigates civic Shakespeare through Romeo and Juliet as a case study for an interrogation of the limits and possibilities of theatre and the idea of the civic. The play's focus on civil strife, political challenge, and the rise of a new conception of the individual within society makes it an ideal site to examine how early modern civic topics were received and reconfigured on...

Renaissance ideas of honour had a profound influence on the English people who formed Shakespeare s audiences. In When Honour s at the Stake, first published in 1973, Norman Council describes the increasing importance of these ideas to the themes and structure of a number of Shakespeare s major plays.

The validity of the most widely approved code of honour was being challenged on a variety of fronts, yet both personal standards of behaviour and public affairs were habitually understood in terms of honour. A series of tragedies are given their basic form by dramatizing the...

The comic grotesque is a powerful element in a great deal of Elizabethan literature, but one which has attracted scant critical attention. In this study, first published in 1980, Neil Rhodes examines the nature of the grotesque in late sixteenth-century culture, and shows the part it played in the development of new styles of comic prose and drama in Elizabethan England. In defining grotesque, the author considers the stylistic techniques of Rabelais and Aretino, as well as the graphic arts. He discusses the use of the grotesque in Elizabethan pamphlet literature and the early satirical...

Is modernity synonymous with progress? Did the Renaissance really break with the cyclical, agrarian time of the Middle Ages, inaugurating a new concept of irreversible time in a secular culture defined by development? How does methodology affect scholarly responses to the idea of the future in the past? This collection of interdisciplinary essays from the fields of literary criticism, cultural studies, politics and intellectual history offers new answers to these commonplace questions. They explore elite and popular culture, women and men s experiences, and the encounter between East and...

This volume offers a practical, accessible and thought-provoking guide to this Roman tragedy, surveying its major themes and critical reception. It also provides a detailed and up-to-date history of the play's performance, beginning with its earliest known staging in 1599, including an analysis of the 2013 film Caesar Must Die starring Italian inmates, and an assessment of why the play is now coming back into vogue on stage. Moving through to four new critical essays, it opens up cutting-edge perspectives on the work, and finishes with a guide to pedagogical approaches by the...

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