Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion
Title | Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion PDF eBook |
Author | William N. West |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 339 |
Release | 2021-11-30 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 022680898X |
A new account of playgoing in Elizabethan England, in which audiences participated as much as performers. What if going to a play in Elizabethan England was more like attending a football match than a Broadway show—or playing in one? In Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion, William N. West proposes a new account of the kind of participatory entertainment expected by the actors and the audience during the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. West finds surprising descriptions of these theatrical experiences in the figurative language of early modern players and playgoers—including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting. Such words and ways of speaking are still in use today, but their earlier meanings, like that of theater itself, are subtly, importantly different from our own. Playing was not confined to the actors on the stage but filled the playhouse, embracing audiences and performers in collaborative experiences that did not belong to any one alone but to the assembled, various crowd. What emerged in playing was a kind of thinking and feeling distributed across persons and times that were otherwise distinct. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears—these and more gave verbal shape to the physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption.
Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion
Title | Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion PDF eBook |
Author | William N. West |
Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Pages | 339 |
Release | 2021-11-30 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 022680903X |
"What if at night at the theaters in Elizabethan England more closely resembled attending a rugby match than sitting in a dark, silent audience, passively witnessing the action on the stage, or closer to going to a rock concert than sitting in front of a large or small screen, quietly and distantly absorbing a film or television drama? In this book, West proposes a new account of what happened in the playhouses of Shakespeare's time, and the kind of participatory entertainment expected by both the actors and the audience. Combining the precision of a philologist and the imagination of a philosopher, West performs careful readings of premodern figures of speech--including understanding, confusion, occupation, eating, and fighting--still in use today, but whose meanings for Elizabethan players, playgoers, and writers have diverged in subtle ways in our era. Playing itself was not restricted to the confines of the actors on the stage but pertained just as much to the audience in a collaborative rather than individualized theater experience, more corporeal, tactile, and active, rather than purely receptive and visual. Thrown apples, smashed bottles of beer, and lumbering bears--these and more contributed to both the verbal and physical interactions between players and playgoers, creating circuits of exchange, production, and consumption,all within the confines of the playhouse. West's account of the experience of the playhouse shows more affinity--and continuity--with more raucous, unruly medieval drama than previous literary critics have allowed. It will be of interest to a wide audience, actors, directors, and scholars included"
Title | PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 225 |
Release | |
Genre | |
ISBN | 019890679X |
New Essays on History and Form in Early Modern English Literature
Title | New Essays on History and Form in Early Modern English Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Nick Moschovakis |
Publisher | Taylor & Francis |
Pages | 182 |
Release | 2024-08-19 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 104009709X |
This volume convenes eight noted scholars with varied positions at the interface of formal and historical literary criticism. The editors’ introduction—a far-reaching account of how both methods have intersected in studies of early modern English texts since the 1990s—is the first such survey in more than 15 years, making it invaluable to scholars entering this area. Three essays address foundational questions about genre, fictionality, and formlessness; five feature close readings of texts or passages ranging from the more canonical (Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton) to the less so (an official record of the 1604 Hampton Court Conference). For scholars and students alike, the book thus models a variety of ways both to conceptualize and to analyze the value of literature at the formal–historical interface. Encompassing drama, lyric, satirical and polemical prose, and metrical as well as rhetorical and logical forms, the collection closes with an afterword by theorist Caroline Levine.
Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
Title | Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater PDF eBook |
Author | Lauren Robertson |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 269 |
Release | 2023-01-31 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1009225154 |
Lauren Robertson shows how the commercial theater transformed early modernity's crisis of uncertainty into spectacular onstage display.
Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater
Title | Entertaining Uncertainty in the Early Modern Theater PDF eBook |
Author | Lauren Robertson |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 269 |
Release | 2022-12-31 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 100922512X |
Lauren Robertson's original study shows that the theater of Shakespeare and his contemporaries responded to the crises of knowledge that roiled through early modern England by rendering them spectacular. Revealing the radical, exciting instability of the early modern theater's representational practices, Robertson uncovers the uncertainty that went to the heart of playgoing experience in this period. Doubt was not merely the purview of Hamlet and other onstage characters, but was in fact constitutive of spectators' imaginative participation in performance. Within a culture in the midst of extreme epistemological upheaval, the commercial theater licensed spectators' suspension among opposed possibilities, transforming dubiety itself into exuberantly enjoyable, spectacular show. Robertson shows that the playhouse was a site for the entertainment of uncertainty in a double sense: its pleasures made the very trial of unknowing possible.
The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies
Title | The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies PDF eBook |
Author | Tracy C. Davis |
Publisher | |
Pages | 350 |
Release | 2024-01-31 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN | 100929489X |
We often know performance when we see it - but how should we investigate it? And how should we interpret what we find out? This book demonstrates why and how mixed methods research is necessary for investigating and explaining performance and advancing new critical agendas in cultural study. The wide range of aesthetic forms, cultural meanings, and social functions found in theatre and performance globally invites a corresponding variety of research approaches. The essays in this volume model reflective consideration of the means, processes, and choices for conducting performance research that is historical, ethnographic, aesthetic, or computational. An international set of contributors address what is meant by planning or designing a research project, doing research (locating and collecting primary sources or resources), and the ensuing work of interpreting and communicating insights. Providing illuminating and necessary guidance, this volume is an essential resource for scholars and students of theatre, performance, and dance.