The Origins of English Revenge Tragedy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Oppitz-Trotman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Performance Studies ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
Dramatic Character ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Duchess Of Malfi ◽  
Tragic Drama

Charting a new course between performance studies and literary criticism, this book discovers a poetics of figuration in English tragic drama. It demonstrates that our recognition of the dramatic person in printed drama of the early modern period is involved in the terms on which those plays were first realized in the theatre. Since many such tragedies challenge and confuse the straightforward discernment of dramatic character, a strong distinction between performance studies and literary criticism breaks down in the course of an attentive reading. In the past this problem of recognition was artificially resolved or ignored so as to launch various sorts of moral interpretation. In fact, the ethical and political difficulty of revenge in plays like The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi is inseparable from the difficulty of discerning human shapes in the theatre and on the page. Moreover, the epistemological issues created by these games of personation have been inadequately addressed by historicist criticism purporting to unearth the social, religious, and political impulsions of Shakespearean drama. Intervening in a wide range of current debates within early modern studies, The Origins of English Revenge Tragedyholds that the origins of English tragic drama cannot be understood without considering how the common player appears in the play.

Motherhood

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Yonemoto
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Low Fertility ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range

The chapter explores the discourse and experience of motherhood within Japan’s low-fertility regime in the early modern period. In a manner rarely seen elsewhere in the early modern world, Japanese families used various means, from infanticide to adoption, to correlate family size with income. The chapter examines a wide range of primary sources to explore the effects of family planning on motherhood in two dimensions, the biological and the social. It also examines motherhood as a lived experience through the writings of Inoue Tsūjo, Kuroda Tosako, and Sekiguchi Chie.

scholarly journals The Hanging Guard: William Hope’s (1660-1724) Invention of Self-defence and the Spirit of Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Alexander Will
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Self Defence

Fight books can be much more than repositories of knowledge or cornerstones of tradition. In some cases they may also reflect fundamental changes in the intellectual and social life of a society and even attempt to change the latter for the better. This is very much true for the works of William Hope (1660-1724). In eight printed books the Scotsman covered a wide range of topics connected to smallsword fencing and duelling. He employed early scientific methods when developing his school of swordplay, reflected on the social implications of fencing, introduced the notion of “sport for better health” into early modern fencing, and sought to institutionalise fencing in order to curb violence. As a whole this reflects the mindset of the early Enlightenment as it started to flourish in Hope’s native Scotland during his lifetime. This paper will answer the question of how the early Enlightenment influenced a set of remarkable Scottish fight books from the early modern period.

La Storia dell’Età Moderna nelle „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken“: lo specchio di un secolo di ricerche

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Irene Fosi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Papal Court

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.

Plants and Literature

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan McHugh
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Hybrid Plant ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
A Minor

In countless ways, plants have been in literature from the start. They literally provide surfaces and tools of inscription, as well as figuratively inspire a diverse body of writing that ranges from documenting changing social and ecological conditions to probing the limits of the human imagination. The dependence of human along with all other life on vegetal bodies assures their omnipresence in literatures across all periods and cultures, positioning them as ready reference points for metaphors, similes, and other creative devices. As comestibles, landscape features, home décor, and of course paper, plants appear in the pages of virtually every literary text. But depictions of botanical life in action often prove portentous, particularly when they remind readers that plants move in mysterious ways. At the frontiers of ancient and medieval European settlements, the plant communities of forests served as vital sources of material and imaginative sustenance. Consequently, early modern literature registers widespread deforestation of these alluring and dangerous borderlands as threats to economic and social along with ecological flourishing, a pattern repeated through the literatures of settler colonialism. Although appearing in the earliest of literatures, appreciation for the ways in which plants inscribe stories of their own lives remains a minor theme, although with accelerating climate change an increasingly urgent one. Myths and legends of hybrid plant-men, trees of life, and man-eating plants are among the many sources informing key challenges to representing plants in modern and contemporary literature, most obviously in popular genre fictions like mystery, horror, and science fiction (sf). Further enlightening these developments are studies that reveal how botanical writing emerges as a site of struggle from the early modern period, deeply entrenched in attempts to systematize and regulate species in tandem with other differences. The scientific triumph of the Linnaean “sexual system” bears a mixed legacy in feminist plant writing, complicated further by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) writers’ creative engagements with the unevenly felt consequences of professionalized plant science. Empowered by critical plant studies, an interdisciplinary formation that rises to the ethical challenges of emergent scientific affirmations of vegetal sentience, literature and literary criticism are reexamining these histories and modeling alternatives. In the early 21st century with less than a fraction of 1 percent of the remaining old growth under conservation protection worldwide, plants appear as never before in fragile and contested communal terrains, overshadowed by people and other animals, all of whose existence depends on ongoing botanical adaptation.

scholarly journals THE RISE OF THE AMBASSADRESS: ENGLISH AMBASSADORIAL WIVES AND EARLY MODERN DIPLOMATIC CULTURE

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 617-638 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEMMA ALLEN
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Intelligence Gathering ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis article reveals how the ambassadress became an important part of early modern diplomatic culture, from the invention of the role in the early sixteenth century. As resident embassies became common across the early modern period, wives increasingly accompanied these diplomatic postings. Such a development has, however, received almost no scholarly attention to date, despite recent intense engagement with the social and cultural dimensions of early modern diplomacy. By considering the activities of English ambassadresses from the 1530s to 1700, accompanying embassies both inside and outside of Europe, it is possible not only to integrate them into narratives of diplomacy, but also to place their activities within broader global and political histories of the period. The presence of the ambassadress changed early modern diplomatic culture, through the creation of gendered diplomatic courtesies, gendered gift-giving practices, and gendered intelligence-gathering networks. Through female sociability networks at their host court, ambassadresses were able to access diplomatic intelligence otherwise restricted from their husbands. This was never more true than for those ambassadresses who held bonds of friendship with politically influential women at their host or home court, allowing them to influence political decision-making central to the success of the diplomatic mission.

Jüdisch-christliche Koexistenz in den Dörfern ausgewählter Grafschaften Frankens während des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts

Aschkenas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben Stretz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jewish Settlement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Typical Picture

Jewish-Christian relations in village or small-town societies during the early modern period were framed by coexistence and conflict on three major fields of encounter: the rural economy, the practice of religion, and the social relations within the local communities. This study provides case studies of these three aspects by drawing on evidence for the two counties of Castell and Wertheim in Franconia. Analysis of three expulsion proceedings and their different outcomes allows us to add a fourth perspective to this typical picture of integration and segregation, the question of how political rule was enacted and communicated. The conditions of Jewish settlement and community life were always precarious and had to be renegotiated on a regular basis. Negotiations were influenced by the diplomatic skills of individual Jews, by the interests of the community or its leading members, of the rulers and their local representatives.

THE TEMPEST AND THE BRITISH IMPERIUM IN 1611

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
TRISTAN MARSHALL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
The Tempest ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Proper Context

Recent moves by New Historicists to evaluate theatrical material from the early modern period have been at the expense of what historians would recognize as acceptable use of historical context. One of the most glaring examples of the dangers of taking a play out of such a proper context has been The Tempest. The play has had a great deal of literary criticism devoted to it, attempting to fit it into comfortable twentieth-century clothing in regard to its commentary on empire, at the expense of what the play's depiction of imperialism meant for the year 1611 when it was written. The purpose of this paper will therefore be to suggest that the play does not actually call into question the Jacobean process of colonization across the Atlantic at all, and suggests that of more importance for its audience would have been the depiction of the hegemony of the island nation of Great Britain as recreated in 1603. Such a historical reconstruction is helped through contrasting Shakespeare's play with the Jonson, Chapman, and Marston collaboration, Eastward Ho, as well as with the anonymous Masque of Flowers and Chapman's Memorable Masque. These works will be used to illustrate just what colonialism might mean for the Jacobean audience when the Virginia project was invoked and suggest that an American tale The Tempest is not.

Servants

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-163
Author(s):  
George Oppitz-Trotman
Keyword(s):  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Drama ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Revenge Tragedy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Revenge Plays ◽  
Ethical Relations

Servants in early modern drama have increasingly been investigated less as objects of domination than as subjects capable of affective and ethical relations with their masters. Both sorts of interpretation depend upon the assumption that actual early modern servants are straightforwardly represented in drama of the time. Observing that common players were themselves patronised and liveried servants, and that the theatre itself appeared as a form of mercenary service, this chapter shows how procedures of dramatic figuration implicate identification of the servant in a complex dialectic of discernment. With roots in various sorts of contemporary social anxiety, such difficulties are at their most intense in revenge tragedy. In many places reading revenge plays involves confronting their ability to undo the social concepts used to grasp their historical content.

scholarly journals Catechizing at Home, 1740–1870: Instruction, Communication and Denomination

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 256-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Clare Martin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Adult Child ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Rote Learning ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Catechizing played an important part in domestic religious education in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as in the better documented early modern period. However, its significance has been neglected in comparison with family prayers (often deemed to be an expression of patriarchy), Sunday observance or even private prayers. This article analyses the incidence of catechizing across religious denominations in Britain from 1740 to 1870, and within selected overseas missionary families. Drawing on a wide range of personal memoirs, the article analyses the range of contexts and relationships within which catechizing could occur. These included not only household worship (which could be conducted by women) but also relationships between siblings. It demonstrates that catechizing could provide opportunities for asking questions and spending ‘quality time’ with parents and / or children, rather than embodying an alienating form of rote-learning. The article therefore challenges many stereotypes relating to family domestic education, relating to themes such as patriarchy, denominational difference and adult-child interaction.

scholarly journals GOING BUST: Some Reflections on Colonial Bankruptcies

Itinerario ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Cátia Antunes ◽  
Susana Münch Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Business Failure ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social

While this special issue raises a significant number of questions, constraints have dictated that only some of these questions are actually answered. The pioneering work presented consequently remains a modest attempt to initiate a more general discussion about the causes and the social and economic consequences of business failure in the early modern period, particularly with regard to colonial enterprises.

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