Hugh Grady
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198130048
- eISBN:
- 9780191671906
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198130048.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, ...
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On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, desacralized culture. Of course, the culture of Renaissance England was permeated with religious beliefs, even though the London stage was secular and commercial, far different in tone and spirit from the explicitly religious drama still produced elsewhere well into the sixteenth century. And these obvious and established fac tend to cancel each other rather than solve a critical debate which goes back at least to the nineteenth century: a debate over an implied or assumed religiosity within the secular drama of the English Renaissance. This chapter examines reification in early and late modernity, the relationship between theatre and religion, secularism, Renaissance reification in contemporary literary criticism, French structuralism/post-structuralism, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory.Less
On the London stages of Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, a major theme emerged: exploration of the possibilities of a completely secular, desacralized culture. Of course, the culture of Renaissance England was permeated with religious beliefs, even though the London stage was secular and commercial, far different in tone and spirit from the explicitly religious drama still produced elsewhere well into the sixteenth century. And these obvious and established fac tend to cancel each other rather than solve a critical debate which goes back at least to the nineteenth century: a debate over an implied or assumed religiosity within the secular drama of the English Renaissance. This chapter examines reification in early and late modernity, the relationship between theatre and religion, secularism, Renaissance reification in contemporary literary criticism, French structuralism/post-structuralism, and Frankfurt School Critical Theory.
Jenna M. Schultz
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526117045
- eISBN:
- 9781526141910
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0015
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Through dynastic accident, England and Scotland were united under King James VI and I in 1603. To smooth the transition, officials attempted to create a single state: Great Britain. Yet the project ...
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Through dynastic accident, England and Scotland were united under King James VI and I in 1603. To smooth the transition, officials attempted to create a single state: Great Britain. Yet the project had a narrow appeal; the majority of the English populace rejected a closer relationship with Scotland. Such a strong reaction against Scotland resulted in a revived sense of Englishness. This essay analyzes English tactics to distance themselves from the Scots through historical treatises. For centuries, the English had created vivid histories to illuminate their ancient past. It is evident from the historical works written between 1586 and 1625 that authors sought to maintain a position of dominance over Scotland through veiled political commentaries. As such, their accounts propagated an English national identity based on a sense of historical supremacy over the Scottish. This was further supported through the use of language studies and archaeological evidence. After the 1603 Union of the Crowns, these stories did not change. Yet, questions arose regarding the king's genealogy, as he claimed descent from the great kings of both kingdoms. Consequently, historians re-invented the past to merge their historical accounts with the king's ancestral claims while continuing to validate English assertions of suzerainty.Less
Through dynastic accident, England and Scotland were united under King James VI and I in 1603. To smooth the transition, officials attempted to create a single state: Great Britain. Yet the project had a narrow appeal; the majority of the English populace rejected a closer relationship with Scotland. Such a strong reaction against Scotland resulted in a revived sense of Englishness. This essay analyzes English tactics to distance themselves from the Scots through historical treatises. For centuries, the English had created vivid histories to illuminate their ancient past. It is evident from the historical works written between 1586 and 1625 that authors sought to maintain a position of dominance over Scotland through veiled political commentaries. As such, their accounts propagated an English national identity based on a sense of historical supremacy over the Scottish. This was further supported through the use of language studies and archaeological evidence. After the 1603 Union of the Crowns, these stories did not change. Yet, questions arose regarding the king's genealogy, as he claimed descent from the great kings of both kingdoms. Consequently, historians re-invented the past to merge their historical accounts with the king's ancestral claims while continuing to validate English assertions of suzerainty.
Joseph M. Ortiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449314
- eISBN:
- 9780801460920
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly ...
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Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly promiscuous in its application and effects. Subsequently, much writing in the period reflects a desire to ward off music's illegibility rather than come to terms with its actual effects. This book revises our understanding of music's relationship to language in Renaissance England. It shows the degree to which discussions of music were ideologically and politically charged. Offering a historically nuanced account of the early modern debate over music, along with close readings of several of Shakespeare's plays (including Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale) and Milton's A Maske, the book challenges the consensus that music's affinity with poetry was widely accepted, or even desired, by Renaissance poets. Shakespeare, more than any other early modern poet, exposed the fault lines in the debate about music's function in art, repeatedly staging disruptive scenes of music that expose an underlying struggle between textual and sensuous authorities. Such musical interventions in textual experiences highlight the significance of sound as an aesthetic and sensory experience independent of any narrative function.Less
Music was a subject of considerable debate during the Renaissance. The notion that music could be interpreted in a meaningful way clashed regularly with evidence that music was in fact profoundly promiscuous in its application and effects. Subsequently, much writing in the period reflects a desire to ward off music's illegibility rather than come to terms with its actual effects. This book revises our understanding of music's relationship to language in Renaissance England. It shows the degree to which discussions of music were ideologically and politically charged. Offering a historically nuanced account of the early modern debate over music, along with close readings of several of Shakespeare's plays (including Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale) and Milton's A Maske, the book challenges the consensus that music's affinity with poetry was widely accepted, or even desired, by Renaissance poets. Shakespeare, more than any other early modern poet, exposed the fault lines in the debate about music's function in art, repeatedly staging disruptive scenes of music that expose an underlying struggle between textual and sensuous authorities. Such musical interventions in textual experiences highlight the significance of sound as an aesthetic and sensory experience independent of any narrative function.
Joseph M. Ortiz
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801449314
- eISBN:
- 9780801460920
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801449314.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's key themes. This book aims to recover the multiplicity of ideas about music in Renaissance England, arguing that Shakespeare is extremely ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's key themes. This book aims to recover the multiplicity of ideas about music in Renaissance England, arguing that Shakespeare is extremely skeptical about the claims to authority made on their behalf. It documents the ways in which Shakespeare denaturalizes his culture's presumptions about music, both in the text of the plays and in their musical performances. It argues that the plays of Shakespeare reveal connections between theories of music and specific ideological ends. Throughout, the book presents examples that throw into relief the ideological and cultural presumptions behind theories of music. Rather than approach music in Shakespeare's plays as a code to be deciphered, the book examines the ideological implications of musical codes themselves.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's key themes. This book aims to recover the multiplicity of ideas about music in Renaissance England, arguing that Shakespeare is extremely skeptical about the claims to authority made on their behalf. It documents the ways in which Shakespeare denaturalizes his culture's presumptions about music, both in the text of the plays and in their musical performances. It argues that the plays of Shakespeare reveal connections between theories of music and specific ideological ends. Throughout, the book presents examples that throw into relief the ideological and cultural presumptions behind theories of music. Rather than approach music in Shakespeare's plays as a code to be deciphered, the book examines the ideological implications of musical codes themselves.
Judith H. Anderson and Joan Pong Linton
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823233496
- eISBN:
- 9780823241224
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823233496.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
One response, such as that Paola Pugliatti entertains in what remains the most comprehensive study of the play's use of source materials, is that all our answers to these questions will be ...
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One response, such as that Paola Pugliatti entertains in what remains the most comprehensive study of the play's use of source materials, is that all our answers to these questions will be ideological. “We tend to use the episode,” she writes, “in order to support some kind of preconceived picture rather than to interpret it,” that is, to serve as guarantor or referent for some supposed outside to discourse, most usually the political or epistemological function of the stage in Renaissance England and by extension the political (or not) opinions of whoever “Shakespeare” may have been.Less
One response, such as that Paola Pugliatti entertains in what remains the most comprehensive study of the play's use of source materials, is that all our answers to these questions will be ideological. “We tend to use the episode,” she writes, “in order to support some kind of preconceived picture rather than to interpret it,” that is, to serve as guarantor or referent for some supposed outside to discourse, most usually the political or epistemological function of the stage in Renaissance England and by extension the political (or not) opinions of whoever “Shakespeare” may have been.
Janet Adelman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226006819
- eISBN:
- 9780226006833
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226006833.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
In this book, the author confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With a distinctive psychological acumen, this book argues that William Shakespeare's play ...
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In this book, the author confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With a distinctive psychological acumen, this book argues that William Shakespeare's play frames the uneasy relationship between Christians and Jews specifically in familial terms in order to recapitulate the vexed familial relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The book locates the promise—or threat—of Jewish conversion as a particular site of tension in the play. Drawing on a variety of cultural materials, it demonstrates that, despite the triumph of its Christians, The Merchant of Venice reflects Christian anxiety and guilt about its simultaneous dependence on and disavowal of Judaism. In this psycho-theological analysis, both the insistence that Shylock's daughter Jessica remain racially bound to her father after her conversion and the depiction of Shylock as a bloody-minded monster are understood as antidotes to Christian uneasiness about a Judaism it can neither own nor disown. In taking seriously the religious discourse of The Merchant of Venice, the book offers a book both on the play itself and on the question of Jews and Judaism in Renaissance England and beyond.Less
In this book, the author confronts her resistance to The Merchant of Venice as both a critic and a Jew. With a distinctive psychological acumen, this book argues that William Shakespeare's play frames the uneasy relationship between Christians and Jews specifically in familial terms in order to recapitulate the vexed familial relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The book locates the promise—or threat—of Jewish conversion as a particular site of tension in the play. Drawing on a variety of cultural materials, it demonstrates that, despite the triumph of its Christians, The Merchant of Venice reflects Christian anxiety and guilt about its simultaneous dependence on and disavowal of Judaism. In this psycho-theological analysis, both the insistence that Shylock's daughter Jessica remain racially bound to her father after her conversion and the depiction of Shylock as a bloody-minded monster are understood as antidotes to Christian uneasiness about a Judaism it can neither own nor disown. In taking seriously the religious discourse of The Merchant of Venice, the book offers a book both on the play itself and on the question of Jews and Judaism in Renaissance England and beyond.
