Moral Play And Counterpublic

Author : Ineke Murakami
Publisher : Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture
ISBN 13 : 9780367865801
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Play and Counterpublic written by Ineke Murakami and published by Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Murakami overturns the misconception that popular English morality plays were simple medieval vehicles for disseminating conservative religious doctrine. On the contrary, Murakami finds that moral drama came into its own in the sixteenth century as a method for challenging normative views on ethics, economics, social rank, and political obligation. From its inception in itinerate troupe productions of the late fifteenth century, "moral play" served not as a cloistered form, but as a volatile public forum. This book demonstrates how the genre's apparently inert conventions--from allegorical characters to the battle between good and evil for Mankind's soul--veiled critical explorations of topical issues. Through close analysis of plays representing key moments of formal and ideological innovation from 1465 to 1599, Murakami makes a new argument for what is at stake in the much-discussed anxiety around the entwined social practices of professional theater and the emergent capitalist market. Moral play fostered a phenomenon that was ultimately more threatening to 'the peace' of the realm than either theater or the notorious market--a political self-consciousness that gave rise to ephemeral, non-elite counterpublics who defined themselves against institutional forms of authority.

Author : Ineke Murakami
Publisher : Taylor & Francis US
ISBN 13 : 9780415886314
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Play and Counterpublic written by Ineke Murakami and published by Taylor & Francis US. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Murakami overturns the misconception that popular English morality plays were simple medieval vehicles for disseminating conservative religious doctrine. On the contrary, Murakami finds that moral drama came into its own in the sixteenth century as a method for challenging normative views on ethics, economics, social rank, and political obligation. From its inception in itinerate troupe productions of the late fifteenth century, "moral play" served not as a cloistered form, but as a volatile public forum. This book demonstrates how the genre's apparently inert conventions--from allegorical characters to the battle between good and evil for Mankind's soul--veiled critical explorations of topical issues. Through close analysis of plays representing key moments of formal and ideological innovation from 1465 to 1599, Murakami makes a new argument for what is at stake in the much-discussed anxiety around the entwined social practices of professional theater and the emergent capitalist market. Moral play fostered a phenomenon that was ultimately more threatening to 'the peace' of the realm than either theater or the notorious market--a political self-consciousness that gave rise to ephemeral, non-elite counterpublics who defined themselves against institutional forms of authority.

Author : Ineke Murakami
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 113680711X
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Play and Counterpublic written by Ineke Murakami and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2011-02-25 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Murakami overturns the misconception that popular English morality plays were simple medieval vehicles for disseminating conservative religious doctrine. On the contrary, Murakami finds that moral drama came into its own in the sixteenth century as a method for challenging normative views on ethics, economics, social rank, and political obligation. From its inception in itinerate troupe productions of the late fifteenth century, "moral play" served not as a cloistered form, but as a volatile public forum. This book demonstrates how the genre’s apparently inert conventions—from allegorical characters to the battle between good and evil for Mankind’s soul—veiled critical explorations of topical issues. Through close analysis of plays representing key moments of formal and ideological innovation from 1465 to 1599, Murakami makes a new argument for what is at stake in the much-discussed anxiety around the entwined social practices of professional theater and the emergent capitalist market. Moral play fostered a phenomenon that was ultimately more threatening to ‘the peace’ of the realm than either theater or the notorious market--a political self-consciousness that gave rise to ephemeral, non-elite counterpublics who defined themselves against institutional forms of authority.

Author : S.P. Cerasano
Publisher : Associated University Presse
ISBN 13 : 0838644783
Total Pages : 206 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 28 written by S.P. Cerasano and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England is an international journal committee to the publication of essays and reviews relevant to drama and theatre history to 1642. This issue includes eight new articles and reviews of fourteen books.

Author : Katherine C. Little
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192883194
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Humanism and Good Books in Sixteenth-Century England written by Katherine C. Little and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Julian Real
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1003837255
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Shakespeare’s Forgotten Allegory written by Julian Real and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-31 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare’s Forgotten Allegory posits three startling points: that we have today forgotten a cultural icon that helped to bring about the Renaissance; that this character, used to distil classical wisdom regarding how to raise children to become moral adults, consistently appeared in plays performed between 1350 and 1650; and that the character was often utilised by the likes of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and therefore adds a long forgotten allegorical narrative to their works. This evidence-based reappraisal of some of the most iconic works in Western literature suggests that a core element of their content has been ‘lost’ for centuries. This text will appeal to anyone with an interest in late medieval and early modern drama, especially the works of Shakespeare; to those interested in the history of teaching and child rearing; to anyone curious about the practical application of philosophy in society; to anyone that would like to know more about the crucial and defining period today known as the Renaissance, and how and why society was redesigned by those with influence; and to all those who would like to know more about how history, which though sometimes misplaced, continues to influenced our modern world.

Author : Ivan Lupic
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812251601
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Subjects of Advice written by Ivan Lupic and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-09-27 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Subjects of Advice, Ivan Lupić uncovers the rich interconnectedness of dramatic art and the culture of counsel in the early modern period. While counsel was an important form of practical knowledge, with concrete political consequences, it was also an ingrained cultural habit, a feature of obligatory mental, moral, and political hygiene. To be a Renaissance subject, Lupić claims, one had to reckon with the advice of others. Lupić examines this reckoning in a variety of sixteenth-century dramatic contexts. The result is an original account of the foundational role that counsel played in the development of Renaissance drama. Lupić begins by considering the figure of Thomas More, whose influential argument about counsel as a form of performance in Utopia set the agenda for the entire century. Resisting linear narratives and recovering, instead, the simultaneity of radically different kinds of dramatic experience, he shows the vitality of later dramatic engagements with More's legacy through an analysis of the moral interlude staged within Sir Thomas More, a play possibly coauthored by Shakespeare. More also helps explain the complex use of counsel in Senecan drama, from the neo-Latin plays of George Buchanan, discussed in connection with Buchanan's political writings, to the historical tragedies of the mid-sixteenth century. If tyranny and exemplarity are the keywords for early Elizabethan drama of counsel, for the plays of Christopher Marlowe it is friendship. Lupić considers Marlowe's interest in friendship and counsel, most notably in Edward II, alongside earlier dramatic treatments, thus exposing the pervasive fantasy of the ideal counselor as another self. Subjects of Advice concludes by placing King Lear in relation to its dramatic sources to demonstrate Shakespeare's deliberate dispersal of counsel throughout his play. Counsel's customary link to plain and fearless speech becomes in Shakespeare's hands a powerful instrument of poetic and dramatic expression.

Author : Lucy Munro
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107471435
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590–1674 written by Lucy Munro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ranging from the works of Shakespeare, Spenser, Jonson and Milton to those of Robert Southwell and Anna Trapnel, this groundbreaking study explores the conscious use of archaic style by the poets and dramatists between 1590 and 1674. It focuses on the wide-ranging, complex and self-conscious uses of archaic linguistic and poetic style, analysing the uses to which writers put literary style in order to re-embody and reshape the past. Munro brings together scholarly conversations on temporality, memory and historiography, on the relationships between medieval and early modern literary cultures, on the workings of dramatic and poetic style, and on national history and identity. Neither pure anachronism nor pure nostalgia, the attempts of writers to reconstruct outmoded styles within their own works reveal a largely untold story about the workings of literary influence and tradition, the interactions between past and present, and the uncertain contours of English nationhood.

Author : William N. West
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022680903X
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Common Understandings, Poetic Confusion written by William N. West and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"

Author : Eleanor Johnson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022657220X
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Staging Contemplation written by Eleanor Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to contemplate? In the Middle Ages, more than merely thinking with intensity, it was a religious practice entailing utter receptiveness to the divine presence. Contemplation is widely considered by scholars today to have been the highest form of devotional prayer, a rarified means of experiencing God practiced only by the most devout of monks, nuns, and mystics. Yet, in this groundbreaking new book, Eleanor Johnson argues instead for the pervasiveness and accessibility of contemplative works to medieval audiences. By drawing together ostensibly diverse literary genres—devotional prose, allegorical poetry, cycle dramas, and morality plays—Staging Contemplation paints late Middle English contemplative writing as a broad genre that operated collectively and experientially as much as through radical individual disengagement from the world. Johnson further argues that the contemplative genre played a crucial role in the exploration of the English vernacular as a literary and theological language in the fifteenth century, tracing how these works engaged modes of disfluency—from strained syntax and aberrant grammar, to puns, slang, code-switching, and laughter—to explore the limits, norms, and potential of English as a devotional language. Full of virtuoso close readings, this book demonstrates a sustained interest in how poetic language can foster a participatory experience of likeness to God among lay and devotional audiences alike.