John J. Mcgavin and Greg Walker
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198768616
- eISBN:
- 9780191821998
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198768616.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter offers the third of the book’s extended case studies of spectatorial experience. It starts with the authors’ differing experiences of a unique modern performance of the full version of ...
More
This chapter offers the third of the book’s extended case studies of spectatorial experience. It starts with the authors’ differing experiences of a unique modern performance of the full version of Sir David Lyndsay’s monumental drama Ane Satire of the Thrie Estaitis (A Satire of the Three Estates, first performed in 1552 and 1554). It uses these to prompt wider reflection on the process of witnessing performance, both in the sixteenth century and today. It considers the problems of historicizing spectatorship, arguing that such an attempt has to engage with the different theatres, physical and mental, within which any performance has its existence for the spectator. And it discusses the difficulty of identifying possible analogies between spectator responses across the centuries, suggesting through specific examples that we often need to recalibrate what we think of as ‘alien’, or as ‘recognizable’, in the drama of the past.Less
This chapter offers the third of the book’s extended case studies of spectatorial experience. It starts with the authors’ differing experiences of a unique modern performance of the full version of Sir David Lyndsay’s monumental drama Ane Satire of the Thrie Estaitis (A Satire of the Three Estates, first performed in 1552 and 1554). It uses these to prompt wider reflection on the process of witnessing performance, both in the sixteenth century and today. It considers the problems of historicizing spectatorship, arguing that such an attempt has to engage with the different theatres, physical and mental, within which any performance has its existence for the spectator. And it discusses the difficulty of identifying possible analogies between spectator responses across the centuries, suggesting through specific examples that we often need to recalibrate what we think of as ‘alien’, or as ‘recognizable’, in the drama of the past.
Greg Walker
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780748681013
- eISBN:
- 9780748684434
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748681013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book explores both the value and the potential pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of the period from the 1380s to the Reformation ‘historically’, that is, in dialogue with historical ...
More
This book explores both the value and the potential pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of the period from the 1380s to the Reformation ‘historically’, that is, in dialogue with historical events and the political cultures of the communities which produced and received it. It examines a wide range of dramatic and literary texts, some of which, like Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Sir David Lyndsay’s monumental drama, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis are relatively well known. Others, like the early Tudor Interlude of Godly Queen Hester, are perhaps less so. What drives the book is a belief that studying the literature of a period provides a far richer experience of its culture and politics than consideration of ‘historical’ documents alone. To read literature historically allows us to see how contemporary men and women deployed the ideas, concepts and symbols that mattered to them and how they represented their own relationships to such ideas and symbols. It allows us to hear them discussing questions of morality, identity, belief, private and public probity and responsibility openly and at length, and suggests how those men and women might respond, emotionally and aesthetically (as well as intellectually or pragmatically) to moral, social, and political issues. To read literature historically is, then, to attend to history imaginatively and aesthetically, with a fuller regard to the concerns, at once both intimately personal and broadly cultural, that underpinned political action, and the beliefs that gave meaning to individual behaviour.Less
This book explores both the value and the potential pitfalls of reading the literature and drama of the period from the 1380s to the Reformation ‘historically’, that is, in dialogue with historical events and the political cultures of the communities which produced and received it. It examines a wide range of dramatic and literary texts, some of which, like Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Sir David Lyndsay’s monumental drama, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis are relatively well known. Others, like the early Tudor Interlude of Godly Queen Hester, are perhaps less so. What drives the book is a belief that studying the literature of a period provides a far richer experience of its culture and politics than consideration of ‘historical’ documents alone. To read literature historically allows us to see how contemporary men and women deployed the ideas, concepts and symbols that mattered to them and how they represented their own relationships to such ideas and symbols. It allows us to hear them discussing questions of morality, identity, belief, private and public probity and responsibility openly and at length, and suggests how those men and women might respond, emotionally and aesthetically (as well as intellectually or pragmatically) to moral, social, and political issues. To read literature historically is, then, to attend to history imaginatively and aesthetically, with a fuller regard to the concerns, at once both intimately personal and broadly cultural, that underpinned political action, and the beliefs that gave meaning to individual behaviour.
