Theatre and Humanism
Title | Theatre and Humanism PDF eBook |
Author | Kent Cartwright |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 333 |
Release | 1999-09-09 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1139425994 |
English drama at the beginning of the sixteenth century was allegorical, didactic and moralistic; but by the end of the century theatre was censured as emotional and even immoral. How could such a change occur? Kent Cartwright suggests that some theories of early Renaissance theatre - particularly the theory that Elizabethan plays are best seen in the tradition of morality drama - need to be reconsidered. He proposes instead that humanist drama of the sixteenth century is theatrically exciting - rather than literary, elitist and dull as it has often been seen - and socially significant, and he attempts to integrate popular and humanist values rather than setting them against each other. Taking as examples the plays of Marlowe, Heywood, Lyly and Greene, as well as many by lesser-known dramatists, the book demonstrates the contribution of humanist drama to the theatrical vitality of the sixteenth century.
Humanism, Drama, and Performance
Title | Humanism, Drama, and Performance PDF eBook |
Author | Hana Worthen |
Publisher | Springer Nature |
Pages | 301 |
Release | 2020-10-13 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 3030440664 |
This book examines the appropriation of theatre and theatrical performance by ideologies of humanism, in terms that continue to echo across the related disciplines of literary, drama, theatre, and performance history and studies today. From Aristotle onward, theatre has been regulated by three strains of critical poiesis: the literary, segregating theatre and the practices of the spectacular from the humanizing work attributed to the book and to the internality of reading; the dramatic, approving the address of theatrical performance only to the extent that it instrumentalizes literary value; and the theatrical, assimilating performance to the conjunction of literary and liberal values. These values have been used to figure not only the work of theatre, but also the propriety of the audience as a figure for its socializing work, along a privileged dualism from the aestheticized ensemble—harmonizing actor, character, and spectator to the essentialized drama—to the politicized assembly, theatre understood as an agonistic gathering.
Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and in the Netherlands 1500-1680
Title | Religious Drama and the Humanist Tradition: Christian Theater in Germany and in the Netherlands 1500-1680 PDF eBook |
Author | J.A. Parente Jr. |
Publisher | BRILL |
Pages | 252 |
Release | 2022-08-22 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9004477055 |
Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence
Title | Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence PDF eBook |
Author | International Association of Theatre Critics. Congress |
Publisher | |
Pages | 287 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Dramatic criticism |
ISBN | 9789540728278 |
The Making of Theatre History
Title | The Making of Theatre History PDF eBook |
Author | Paul Kuritz |
Publisher | PAUL KURITZ |
Pages | 478 |
Release | 1988 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 9780135478615 |
Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth-Century England
Title | Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth-Century England PDF eBook |
Author | Katherine C. Little |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 241 |
Release | 2023-03-16 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0192883194 |
This book explores sixteenth-century humanism as an origin for the idea of literature as good, even great, books. It argues that humanists located the value of books not only in the goodness of their writing-their eloquence--but also in their capacity to shape readers in good and bad behavior, thoughts, and feelings, in other words, in their morality. To approach humanism in this way, by attending to its moral interests, is to provide a new perspective on periodization, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance / early modern. That is, humanists did not so much rupture with medieval ideas about literature or with medieval models as they adapted and altered them, offering a new confidence about an old idea: the moral instructiveness of pagan, classical texts for Christian readers. This revaluation of literature was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, humanist confidence inspired authors to invent their own good books--good in style and morals--in morality plays such as Everyman and the Christian Terence tradition and in educational treatises such as Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke of the Governour. On the other hand, humanism placed a new burden on authors, requiring their work to teach and delight. In the wake of humanism, authors struggled to articulate the value of their work for readers, returning to a pre-humanist path that they associated with Geoffrey Chaucer. This medieval-inflected doubt pervades the late sixteenth-century writings of the most prolific and influential Elizabethans-Robert Greene, George Gascoigne, and Edmund Spenser.
Shakespeare the Renaissance Humanist
Title | Shakespeare the Renaissance Humanist PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 2016 |
Genre | Ethics in literature |
ISBN | 9781137580153 |
"Shakespeare the Renaissance Humanist is a study of the moral philosophy that underlay the"street" humanism in the mind of Shakespeare's spectator when he went to see Hamlet or King Lear at the Globe. The work examines how his plays reflected the moral philosophy that his spectators were living in their daily lives"