Some Pictorial Aspects of Early Mountebank Stages

PMLA ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-96
Author(s):  
John H. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
To Come ◽  
Mechanical Devices

The commedia dell'arte had no theatre of its own. When the commedia took form in the second half of the sixteenth century, the itinerant actors found themselves in the midst of intense theatrical activity, and readily appropriated available stages as a background for their buffoonery. In public squares, at fairs, festivals, and other gathering places, mountebanks attracted crowds to their platforms by songs interspersed with dialogue, trickery, and acrobatic stunts. In palatial halls of wealthy dukes, guests assembled to witness spectacular shows with expensive settings and intricate mechanical devices. With these opportunities before them, the comedians soon began to appear with the charlatans, and to come under the patronage of influential dukes. The players were invited to participate at wedding festivities, triumphal entries, sumptuous banquets, in the courts of kings, and in the splendor of royal palaces. Again the same troupe might also be found on a crude platform in the Square of San Marco, at a fiesta in Florence, or along a travelled roadside. The comic Arlecchino, dressed in patchwork, the pedantic Dottore, with his academic gown, the braggart Capitano, with his long rapier, and the foolish old Pantalone, with his long flowing gown, performed for king and artisan in London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, or Ferrara.

LINGUACULTURAL ASPECT OF TEMPORAL NOMINATIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (30) ◽  
pp. 200-213
Author(s):  
Anna Shapoval
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Experimental Analysis ◽  
Information Resource ◽  
Basic System ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Lunar Calendar ◽  
Temporal System ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come

Analysis of linguocultural aspect of temporal nominations is impossible without involving the problems of hrononymic lexics. Chrononyms is an important information resource of a certain linguaculture, some distinctive peculiarities of conceptual picture of the world. The aim of the experimental analysis is a complex examination of the linguacultural aspect of temporal nominations that function in Chinese and Turkish languages reflecting the concepts of the world. The research was based on the material of the novels “Imperial woman” by Pearl Buck and “Roxolana” by Pavlo Zagrebelniy. The analysis of recent scientific publications allowed us to come to the conclusion that the investigation of hrononymic lexics can involve different theoretical and practical principles. Being guided by the existing classifications of chrononyms (N. Podolskaya, M. Torchinsky, S. Remmer) the linguocultural features of the following types of temporal chrononymic lexical units were identified and studied in the research: georthonyms, dynastic chrononyms, tumultonyms, parsonyms and mensonyms. The results of the research demonstrate that not all lexical units of temporal denotation chosen from the above mentioned novels refer to the class of chrononyms. The group under investigation includes the following lexemes: nominations of the lunar calendar, nominations of the solar calendar, nominations of mixed calendar and temporal slots denoting day and night. The basic system of chronology in the linguiacultures under analysis is the dominance of the lunar calendar nominations (Chinese picture of the world — 51,0 %, Turkish — 40,4 %). In the analyzed works the nominations of the solar calendar are used less often in the Chinese picture of the world; the usage of this unit reaches 20 %, and this phenomenon is historically conditioned. Mixed calendar nominations (21 % of temporal units) are rather common, solar calendar nominations are refined by the monthly calendar; it can be explained by the fact that the Chinese mind is conservative towards the new temporal system. In the Turkish picture of the world 45 % of temporal vocabulary belongs to the solar calendar since in the sixteenth century only a lunar calendar operated in the Ottoman Empire. It should be mentioned that significant place in the temporal vocabulary of “Roxolana” is conditioned by the influence of the linguistic personality of the author, who was a Ukrainian.

The Commedia dell'arte: An Introduction

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Katritzky
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Early History ◽  
Precise Definition ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Street Theatre ◽  
Dramatic Performance ◽  
Stock Types ◽  
Definition Of

Although more has been written on the commedia dell'arte than on any other type of theatre, many fundamental questions remain unanswered, and opinions concerning its origins, early history, and definition are surprisingly divergent. It is evident that the term ‘commedia dell'arte’ would become virtually meaningless if it were stretched to include, without qualification, all manifestations of theatrical entertainment which feature characters representing, or deriving from, its stock types; or the full range of theatrical practises offered by the very versatile early comici d'arte, although all are of concern to commedia studies. The commedia dell'arte itself may be broadly defined as a type of professional dramatic performance associated with distinctive stock characters, that arose in mid-sixteenth-century Italy, whose evolving cultural derivatives have spread throughout Europe. Its stock types drew on a wide variety of sources, including mystery and mummers’ plays, carnival masks, street theatre and court entertainment; popular farces and erudite comedy; and have transcended the theatre to play key roles in music, dance, art and literature. The extreme complexity of its continuing interchanges with other cultural phenomena makes precise definition of the commedia dell'arte elusive, and the term itself also resists easy definition because it was coined only in mid-eighteenth-century Paris, two centuries after the type of theatre with which it is associated first came into being.

‘Dishonourable’ youth, guilds, and the changed world view of sex, illegitimacy, and women in late-sixteenth-century Germany

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIA R. BOES
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Unwed Mothers ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come

This study focuses on two closely related exclusionary guild policies implemented in Germany towards the latter part of the sixteenth century: the barring of illegitimates and women. The article addresses the reasons for and, more importantly, the repercussions of these exclusions, which affected many cultural and mentality patterns and led to the social and psychological scarring of illegitimates and their unwed mothers for centuries to come.

The Eye of Truth (L’œil de la verité)

Daphnis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Katrin Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Wars Of Religion ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Modern France ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time

Written in the last decades of the sixteenth century and anonymously published for the first time in 1616, Agrippa d’Aubigné’s epic poem Les Tragiques offers an unusual literary testimony of interconfessional violence during the Wars of Religion in early modern France. Focusing on Aubigné’s aim to give a documentation of violence for generations to come, this article discusses the complex relationship between testimony and epic narration. Agrippa d’Aubignés Epos Les Tragiques, das der Autor 1616 nach jahrzehntelanger Bearbeitungszeit erstmals anonym veröffentlicht, stellt in Hinblick auf die gewaltsamen konfessionellen Auseinandersetzungen, die Frankreich in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts erschütterten, ein außergewöhnliches Beispiel literarischer Zeugenschaft dar. Mit Blick auf das unverkennbare Anliegen des Autors, die erlittene Gewalt zu bezeugen und der Nachwelt zugänglich zu machen, erörtert der vorliegende Artikel das testimoniale Potenzial epischen Erzählens.

Anabaptism and English Sectarianism in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Loades
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
Royal Authority ◽  
Radical Nature ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Return Home ◽  
To Come

From about 1528 onward radical protestants of various kinds from the Low Countries began to seek refuge in England from the pressures of persecution in their homelands. Until the advent of Thomas More as chancellor, persecution in England was sporadic and rather lax. The royal authority had not hitherto been invoked, and the lollards were not commonly of the stuff of martyrs, which induced a certain complacency in the English bishops when faced with the challenges of nascent protestantism. After More’s brief tenure of office was over, persecution under royal auspices continued, but on a very much smaller scale than in the Netherlands, so that the incentive for radicals to come to England, either permanently or temporarily, remained. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them lived in London, Norwich and other towns of the south-east over the next twenty years. A few, like Jan Mattijs, were burned in England, others, like Anneke Jans, met the same fate on their return home, but many lived and worked peacefully, attracting remarkably little attention. Considering their numbers, and the radical nature of their views, they seem to have made only a very slight impact upon their adopted country. A few Englishmen, like that ‘Henry’ who turned up as the sponsor of the Bocholt meeting in 1536, embraced their ideas wholeheartedly, but for the most part the effect seems to have been extremely piecemeal and diffuse, producing a wide variety of individual eccentricities rather than anything in the nature of a coherent movement. However, the presence of these radicals and their English sympathisers has always served to confuse students of the reformation, not least by appearing to justify contemporary conservative attempts to discredit protestantism as a Tower of Babel.

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