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History and Drama
Aristotle’s neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past – arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their “emplotments” (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction. Written by experts who teach in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the United States, the articles provide a thorough interpretation of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon, demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples from France, Russia, England, Italy, and the Netherlands.
English Parish Drama
This collection of essays presents the multiplicity of dramatic and paradramatic activity that flourished in medieval and early modern England at the parish level. The evidence here adduced is largely from churchwardens' accounts and from the records of the ecclesiastical courts. The book contains ten articles that consider the various money making ventures undertaken by English parishes for the support of the church. The authors study subjects ranging from paradramatic activities such as rushbearing, dancing and bull and bear baiting through more hybrid and problematical events such as the king games and Robin Hood gatherings and plays, to what can be considered 'true' drama with sets, prop...
Carnival and the Carnivalesque
From the Fool to the Wildman, from the irate Reformer to the festive Masqueraders, this collection of articles offers a variety of topics, approaches, and agendas in the study of early modern European theatre. With samplings from Scandinavia, Germany, England, France, the Iberian peninsula, and even the New World, this collection also spans time, from the late fifteenth century to the present. In the process, Carnival and the carnivalesque are examined from archival, Bakhtinian, cultural, and even political points of view. The articles in this collection reveal the variety and inherent vitality of scholarship in early modern theatre. The thirteen essays have been selected from presentations made at the Eighth Triennial Congress of the Société Internationale pour l'Etude du Théâtre Médiéval held in Toronto (1995), under the auspices of the Records of Early English Drama project and Victoria University in the University of Toronto.
Farce and Farcical Elements
Farcical elements were incorporated into non-comic drama ever since the theatre had been rediscovered in the Middle Ages. Already at a very early stage, comic scenes proved to be popular additions to liturgical music drama and, later, to religious plays in the vernacular. Some scholars believe that the genre of farce developed out of these farcical elements. The suggestion was made that farces, similar to the stuffing of meat or poultry, had been added to plays to increase audience involvement. Other researchers see quite different origins for the farce. The present volume does not aspire to solve the question of the relationship between the two types of "comedy" on the medieval stages but its editors hope that it will nevertheless contribute to this discussion. In addition, it will enable its readers to form an impression of the huge variety of the comic in the vast area of medieval and early Renaissance theatre and drama.
Acts and Texts
For the Middle Ages and Renaissance, meaning and power were created and propagated through public performance. Processions, coronations, speeches, trials, and executions are all types of public performance that were both acts and texts: acts that originated in the texts that gave them their ideological grounding; texts that bring to us today a trace of their actual performance. Literature, as well, was for the pre-modern public a type of performance: throughout the medieval and early modern periods we see a constant tension and negotiation between the oral/aural delivery of the literary work and the eventual silent/read reception of its written text. The current volume of essays examines the...
Transforming the Dead
The essays in Transforming the Dead: Culturally Modified Bone in the Prehistoric Midwest explore the numerous ways that Eastern Woodland Native Americans selected, modified, and used human bones as tools, trophies, ornaments, and other objects imbued with cultural significance in daily life and rituals.
Moving Subjects
Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of "moving subjects" they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.
Comic Drama in the Low Countries, C.1450-1560
"During the Middle Ages and early modern period, a dramatic culture of astonishing vitality developed in the Low Countries. Owing to the activities of organizations known as rederijkerskamers, or "chambers of rhetoric", dramas became a central aspect of public life in the cities of the Netherlands. The comedies produced by these groups are particularly interesting. Drawing their forms and narratives from folklore and popular ritual, and entertaining in their own right, they also bring together a range of important concerns; they respond directly to some of the key developments in the period, reflecting the political and religious turmoil of the Reformation and Dutch Revolt, the emergence of ...
The Films of Robin Williams
From his first appearance as Mork from Ork on the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, Robin Williams was heralded as a singular talent. In the pre-cable television era, he was one of the few performers to successfully transition from TV to film. An Oscar-winning actor and preternaturally quick-witted comedian, Williams became a cultural icon, leaving behind a large and varied body of work when he unexpectedly took his own life in 2014. This collection of new essays brings together a range of perspectives on Williams and his oeuvre, including beloved hits like Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning, Vietnam, Good Will Hunting, The Fisher King, Dead Poets Society and Aladdin. Contributors explore his earlier work (Mork and Mindy, The World According to Garp) and his political and satirical films (Moscow on the Hudson, Toys). Williams's darker, less well-known fare, such as Being Human, One Hour Photo, Final Cut and Boulevard, is also covered. Williams's artistry has become woven into the fabric of our global media culture.
The Great Western Schism, 1378-1417
A new history of the Great Western Schism, focusing on social drama and the performance of legitimacy and papacy.
