Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton
Title | Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton PDF eBook |
Author | Swapan Chakravorty |
Publisher | Clarendon Press |
Pages | 246 |
Release | 1996-05-23 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 019159170X |
A comprehensive reassessment of Middleton's cultural importance, this wide-ranging study examines both the writer's dramatic and non-dramatic texts to show how he laid bare the complicit interests at work behind assumptions about sex, morality, society, and politics in late feudal culture. Middleton's importance has long been acknowledged in the modern theatre, but academic criticism still seems distracted by questions regarding his morals and `Puritanism'. Swapan Chakravorty argues again the reductivism of such enquiries, and demonstrates the complexity behind the texts' disengagement from received ideological premises and gneric formulae. Combining close reading with lively historical analysis, Society and Politics in the Plays of Thomas Middleton reveals Middleton to have been a pioneer of politically self-conscious theatre. Full of insight, this study brings alive the plays' meanings by engaging with the social, political, and cultural concerns of Middleton's day.
Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama
Title | Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama PDF eBook |
Author | Mark Kaethler |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 237 |
Release | 2021-05-10 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1501513990 |
Thomas Middleton and the Plural Politics of Jacobean Drama represents the first sustained study of Middleton’s dramatic works as responses to James I’s governance. Through examining Middleton’s poiesis in relation to the political theology of Jacobean London, Kaethler explores early forms of free speech, namely parrhēsia, and rhetorical devices, such as irony and allegory, to elucidate the ways in which Middleton’s plural art exposes the limitations of the monarch’s sovereign image. By drawing upon earlier forms of dramatic intervention, James’s writings, and popular literature that blossomed during the Jacobean period, including news pamphlets, the book surveys a selection of Middleton’s writings, ranging from his first extant play The Phoenix (1604) to his scandalous finale A Game at Chess (1624). In the course of this investigation, the author identifies that although Middleton’s drama spurs political awareness and questions authority, it nevertheless simultaneously promotes alternative structures of power, which manifest as misogyny and white supremacy.
Thomas Middleton: Four Plays
Title | Thomas Middleton: Four Plays PDF eBook |
Author | Thomas Middleton |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Pages | 559 |
Release | 2014-10-10 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 1408174634 |
This New Mermaids anthology brings together the four most popular and widely studied of Thomas Middleton's plays - Women Beware Women; The Changeling; The Roaring Girl and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside - with a new introduction by William Carroll, examining the plays in the context of early modern theatre, culture and politics, as well as their language, characters and themes. On-page commentary notes guide students to a better understanding and combine to make this an indispensable student edition ideal for study and classroom use from A Level upwards.
Thomas Middleton as Social Critic
Title | Thomas Middleton as Social Critic PDF eBook |
Author | Virginia Lee Larsen |
Publisher | |
Pages | 414 |
Release | 1995 |
Genre | English drama |
ISBN |
Thomas Middleton in Context
Title | Thomas Middleton in Context PDF eBook |
Author | Suzanne Gossett |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 417 |
Release | 2011-04-21 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 0521190541 |
An illuminating study of all works in the newly enlarged Middleton canon, placing them in personal, national, international and theatrical contexts.
Social Contract Theory in the Plays of Thomas Middleton
Title | Social Contract Theory in the Plays of Thomas Middleton PDF eBook |
Author | Caroline Whitson |
Publisher | |
Pages | 229 |
Release | 19?? |
Genre | English drama |
ISBN |
Thomas Middleton
Title | Thomas Middleton PDF eBook |
Author | J. R. Mulryne |
Publisher | Liverpool University Press |
Pages | 64 |
Release | 1979 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN |
'A great observer of human nature, without fear, without sentiment, without prejudice...' wrote T. S. Eliot in his essay on Middleton. For long Middleton's fame has rested upon two tragedies, Women Beware Women and The Changeling (with William Rowley), which have been especially admired for the surprisingly complex depiction of their female characters. In recent years the professional theatre has come increasingly to appreciate the range of Middleton's comedy, the keenness of his satirical insight into the society of his time, and the excellence of his stage-craft. Middleton was among the most prolific of Jacobean dramatists, both independently and as a collaborator. In his essay, Professor Mulryne has focussed attention upon six representative plays. He touches briefly upon the still disputed question of the authorship of The Second Maiden's Tragedy, a piece only assigned to Middleton in the late nineteenth-century. The bulk of his essay is devoted to four works, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the most trenchant of Middleton's comedies on bourgeois life, A Game at Chess, a highly successful satire on contemporary politics, and the two tragedies referred to above, which mark the climax of his dramatic art. Like Shakespeare, Middleton served a long apprenticeship in comedy, and perhaps carried the principle of extending and modifying tragedy by the intimate association of comedy even further than Shakespeare.