Prologue

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Recording Process ◽  
And Performance ◽  
A Performance

The Prologue confronts the volatility and airy capriciousness of song as a performance medium and considers the methodological challenges of locating song’s musical and performance-based traces. Nuancing Carolyn Abbate’s influential notion of the “drastic” nature of musical performance, it argues for the necessity of factoring the embodied experience of song into literary analysis. The Prologue devotes particular attention to women’s engagement with song as a performance-based—and performative—genre in early modern England, a history whose richness is reflected in the companion recording. Even as the recording process exemplifies the impossibility of pinpointing the “drastic” in definitive terms, this acoustic archive—as well as the performers’ reflections on their experience of inhabiting the featured pieces—underscores the importance of tuning our ears to the musical matter of early modern literary texts, many of which were the products of embodied and musical processes of circulation.

Shakespeare's Representation of Weather, Climate and Environment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Chiari
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Ability To Act

While ecocritical approaches to literary texts receive more and more attention, climate-related issues remain fairly neglected, particularly in the field of Shakespeare studies. This monograph explores the importance of weather and changing skies in early modern England while acknowledging the fact that traditional representations and religious beliefs still fashioned people’s relations to meteorological phenomena. At the same time, a growing number of literati stood against determinism and defended free will, thereby insisting on man’s ability to act upon celestial forces. Yet, in doing so, they began to give precedence to a counter-intuitive approach to Nature. Sophie Chiari argues that Shakespeare reconciles the scholarly views of his time with more popular ideas rooted in superstition and that he promotes a sensitive, pragmatic understanding of climatic events. She pays particular attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Othello, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Taking into account the influence of classical thought, each of the book’s seven chapters emphasises specific issues (e.g. cataclysmic disorders, the dog days’ influence, freezing temperatures, threatening storms) and considers the way climatic events were presented on stage and how they came to shape the production and reception of Shakespeare’s drama.

Whose Saint Crispins Day Is It?: Shoemaking, Holiday Making, and the Politics of Memory in Early Modern England

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1467-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison A. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
English Politics

This article demonstrates an early modern association between the trade of shoemaking and the act of altering the festal calendar. It traces this link through a series of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literary texts including Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft, Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and — most notably — Henry V. The article argues that the depictions of cobblers making holidays resonated with the early modern English politics of ritual observance, and its concluding discussion of the Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V shows how the play imagines king and cobblers vying for control of England's commemorative practice.

Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Early Modern English Drama ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
Critical Site

This collection of essays brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to roleplaying to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare's era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit Heyam
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This introduction discusses the reputation of King Edward II (1307–1327) in medieval and early modern England, and the implications of this reputation beyond its immediate relevance to scholars of Edward II’s reign and afterlife: as a case study for the history of sex and the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression; as a source of positive depictions of love between men; as a paradigmatic exemplum for discussions of favouritism and deposition, and thereby a case study providing insight into the early modern use of medieval history; as a means of developing our understanding of literary texts such as Marlowe’s Edward II; and as a process that illuminates the literary nature of medieval and early modern historical narratives.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 203-208
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Women's Writing ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Digital Initiative ◽  
Women’S Writing

The Epilogue presents two central conclusions: (1) that song is a slippery and multidimensional form that demands to be considered in embodied, gendered, and performance-based terms, and (2) that song constituted a vital, and vitally charged, rhetorical medium for women writers, performers, and patrons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Epilogue also open up future areas of critical inquiry, both in relation to early modern women’s writing and literary studies more broadly. In particular, it introduces Early Modern Songscapes, an emergent collaborative and interdisciplinary digital initiative that is responding directly to the methodological questions raised by The Matter of Song in Early Modern England.

scholarly journals The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit Heyam
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
The Past ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
Political Pamphlets

During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how this reputation developed, providing new insights into the processes and priorities that shaped narratives of sexual transgression in medieval and early modern England. In doing so, it analyses the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression in English, Latin and French; the conditions that created space for sympathetic depictions of same-sex love; and the use of medieval history in early modern political polemic. It also focuses, in particular, on the cultural impact of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II (c.1591-92). Through such close readings of poetry and drama, alongside chronicle accounts and political pamphlets, it demonstrates that Edward’s medieval and early modern afterlife was significantly shaped by the influence of literary texts and techniques. A ‘literary transformation’ of historiographical methodology is, it argues, an apposite response to the factors that shaped medieval and early modern narratives of the past.

scholarly journals ‘Come, now a roundel and a fairy song’: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the early modern invitation to the dance

2018 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-68
Author(s):  
Andrew Hiscock
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Performance ◽  
And Function

This article considers the status and function of dance in one of Shakespeare’s best-known comedies. Equally importantly, it seeks to embed this playtext within the intense and multifaceted cultural debate surrounding dance and performance in early modern England. Dance is explored in legal, moral, philosophical and spiritual terms in the course of this discussion. In its final stages, this article also considers the appeal for dancing which the comedy has exercised for generations of performers down the centuries.

Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Early Modern English Drama ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
Critical Site

This collection of essays brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games—from dicing to bowling to roleplaying to videogames—to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare’s era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document