Robert S. Miola
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112648
- eISBN:
- 9780191670831
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112648.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
While utilizing heavy Seneca and analysing how this provides models that emphasize Shakespeare's works on furor, tyranny, revenge, rhetoric, and other such themes, its use is not exclusive to this ...
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While utilizing heavy Seneca and analysing how this provides models that emphasize Shakespeare's works on furor, tyranny, revenge, rhetoric, and other such themes, its use is not exclusive to this sole genre. Such can also be applied to comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream wherein parodies and tragicomic movement are highlighted. Making use of ‘light Seneca’ is more appropriate in the contexts of comedies or in the hybrid genre referred to as tragicomedy. As we observe that Guarini's works like Il pastor fido may have influenced Shakespeare's writings, we examine how the works of both are grounded on the common origins of Seneca through the citation of excerpts from some of the famous works that have used this style of light Seneca.Less
While utilizing heavy Seneca and analysing how this provides models that emphasize Shakespeare's works on furor, tyranny, revenge, rhetoric, and other such themes, its use is not exclusive to this sole genre. Such can also be applied to comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream wherein parodies and tragicomic movement are highlighted. Making use of ‘light Seneca’ is more appropriate in the contexts of comedies or in the hybrid genre referred to as tragicomedy. As we observe that Guarini's works like Il pastor fido may have influenced Shakespeare's writings, we examine how the works of both are grounded on the common origins of Seneca through the citation of excerpts from some of the famous works that have used this style of light Seneca.
SWAPAN CHAKRAVORTY
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182665
- eISBN:
- 9780191673856
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182665.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Thomas Middleton’s major comedies and tragedies appeared to T. S. Eliot ‘as if written by two different men’. However, the truth is that Middleton ...
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Thomas Middleton’s major comedies and tragedies appeared to T. S. Eliot ‘as if written by two different men’. However, the truth is that Middleton tried the tragicomic vein as early as in Phoenix; his other early tragedies include Timon, Yorkshire, and Revenger. In the The Witch, the plot revolves around witchcraft, which carries the double metaphorical charge of tyranny and treason. Here, the Duke sexualizes conquest and tyranny by marrying the beaten enemy’s daughter, and then forcing her to commit symbolic parricide. The focus shifts to the Duchess’s scheme to allure, use, and then kill Almachildes. The shift reflects the complicity of sex, blackmail, and political misrule glimpsed in the Essex case. The play’s blend of Machiavelli and the occult is an instance of Middleton’s socially engaged opportunism which could turn palace gossip into political fable. Honour, privilege, nature, and law are other themes found in Middleton’s plays.Less
Thomas Middleton’s major comedies and tragedies appeared to T. S. Eliot ‘as if written by two different men’. However, the truth is that Middleton tried the tragicomic vein as early as in Phoenix; his other early tragedies include Timon, Yorkshire, and Revenger. In the The Witch, the plot revolves around witchcraft, which carries the double metaphorical charge of tyranny and treason. Here, the Duke sexualizes conquest and tyranny by marrying the beaten enemy’s daughter, and then forcing her to commit symbolic parricide. The focus shifts to the Duchess’s scheme to allure, use, and then kill Almachildes. The shift reflects the complicity of sex, blackmail, and political misrule glimpsed in the Essex case. The play’s blend of Machiavelli and the occult is an instance of Middleton’s socially engaged opportunism which could turn palace gossip into political fable. Honour, privilege, nature, and law are other themes found in Middleton’s plays.
Derek Hughes
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119746
- eISBN:
- 9780191671203
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119746.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Tragicomedy, the dominant genre of the early Restoration, did not survive long into the 1670s, killed off by declining faith in the heroic and the hero-king. The decreasing convincingness of early ...
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Tragicomedy, the dominant genre of the early Restoration, did not survive long into the 1670s, killed off by declining faith in the heroic and the hero-king. The decreasing convincingness of early Restoration forms is strikingly shown by Thomas Shadwell's recycling of John Fountain's unperformed The Rewards of Vertue as The Royal Shepherdess. The plot is one of restoration, the shepherdess Urania being saved at the last minute from decapitation by the revelation that she is the daughter of the deposed and martyred King of Thrace (she had been condemned for marrying and conceiving the child of a prince, but her exalted birth removes the scandal). Urania is also pursued by the married King of Arcadia, but he is reformed in a signally chaste bedroom trick, wherein his Queen impersonates Urania and talks him into chastity without the need for feigned adultery.Less
Tragicomedy, the dominant genre of the early Restoration, did not survive long into the 1670s, killed off by declining faith in the heroic and the hero-king. The decreasing convincingness of early Restoration forms is strikingly shown by Thomas Shadwell's recycling of John Fountain's unperformed The Rewards of Vertue as The Royal Shepherdess. The plot is one of restoration, the shepherdess Urania being saved at the last minute from decapitation by the revelation that she is the daughter of the deposed and martyred King of Thrace (she had been condemned for marrying and conceiving the child of a prince, but her exalted birth removes the scandal). Urania is also pursued by the married King of Arcadia, but he is reformed in a signally chaste bedroom trick, wherein his Queen impersonates Urania and talks him into chastity without the need for feigned adultery.
Martin Wiggins
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112280
- eISBN:
- 9780191670749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112280.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
By 1600, the assassin needed no introduction to playgoers: allusions in early seventeenth-century plays tell us that he was a stock character, whose participation in murder plots could be taken for ...
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By 1600, the assassin needed no introduction to playgoers: allusions in early seventeenth-century plays tell us that he was a stock character, whose participation in murder plots could be taken for granted, and whose behaviour followed familiar patterns. That the assassin became an unfashionable character type in the later 1590s is a hypothesis; but it is a fact that he was used more sparingly and more sparely in new plays written in those years. However, the character did not simply dwindle out of existence in the early Jacobean period: instead, we see a remarkable revival of interest from about 1600. An unlikely driving force behind this recrudescence was the development of a taste for the new genre of tragicomedy. In the early seventeenth century, there emerged an interest (not confined to formal tragicomedies) in assassins who do not complete their mission. The individual form of murder which gave most scope for adaptation to tragicomedy was poisoning.Less
By 1600, the assassin needed no introduction to playgoers: allusions in early seventeenth-century plays tell us that he was a stock character, whose participation in murder plots could be taken for granted, and whose behaviour followed familiar patterns. That the assassin became an unfashionable character type in the later 1590s is a hypothesis; but it is a fact that he was used more sparingly and more sparely in new plays written in those years. However, the character did not simply dwindle out of existence in the early Jacobean period: instead, we see a remarkable revival of interest from about 1600. An unlikely driving force behind this recrudescence was the development of a taste for the new genre of tragicomedy. In the early seventeenth century, there emerged an interest (not confined to formal tragicomedies) in assassins who do not complete their mission. The individual form of murder which gave most scope for adaptation to tragicomedy was poisoning.
Roger Chartier
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199641819
- eISBN:
- 9780191749025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641819.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter is devoted to the Spanish and French plays that adapted the story of Cardenio for the stage and coped with the same difficulties faced by Fletcher and Shakespeare (if they are the ...
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This chapter is devoted to the Spanish and French plays that adapted the story of Cardenio for the stage and coped with the same difficulties faced by Fletcher and Shakespeare (if they are the authors of the play performed at the English Court in 1613): i.e., how to transform the narrative structure of the fortunes and misfortunes of the four Cervantes lovers into a dramatic plot, and to decide if Don Quixote and Sancho must or must not be present in a tragicomedy devoted to Cardenio, Luscinda, Fernando, and Dorotea. The chapter analyses Guillén de Castro and Pichou’s answers to these challenges focussing on specific scenes, especially the embarrassing scene of the marriage between Luscinda and Fernando, both already engaged and married elsewhere by an exchange of vows.Less
This chapter is devoted to the Spanish and French plays that adapted the story of Cardenio for the stage and coped with the same difficulties faced by Fletcher and Shakespeare (if they are the authors of the play performed at the English Court in 1613): i.e., how to transform the narrative structure of the fortunes and misfortunes of the four Cervantes lovers into a dramatic plot, and to decide if Don Quixote and Sancho must or must not be present in a tragicomedy devoted to Cardenio, Luscinda, Fernando, and Dorotea. The chapter analyses Guillén de Castro and Pichou’s answers to these challenges focussing on specific scenes, especially the embarrassing scene of the marriage between Luscinda and Fernando, both already engaged and married elsewhere by an exchange of vows.
Robert S. Miola
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182696
- eISBN:
- 9780191673863
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182696.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
While playwrights do not set New Comedy within strict generic and conventional bounds, we observe how Terence and Plautus were able to greatly influence various aspects of other genres such as ...
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While playwrights do not set New Comedy within strict generic and conventional bounds, we observe how Terence and Plautus were able to greatly influence various aspects of other genres such as tragicomedy, Renaissance romance, and even tragedy itself. We observe that tragedy and New Comedy may have shared a certain mutual relationship as both have contributed to each other through the mere passing on of passages to more drastic forms such as subordinate characters. The integration and reconstruction of these two different genres came not as a surprise since such resembled the cinquecento and other components of the English Renaissance. As prominent figures like Shakespeare recognize a genre not as a set of rules but as a collection of possibilities and expectations, we have to consider how comedy is not without a darker side. Thus, this chapter looks into the balance of both negative and positive implications.Less
While playwrights do not set New Comedy within strict generic and conventional bounds, we observe how Terence and Plautus were able to greatly influence various aspects of other genres such as tragicomedy, Renaissance romance, and even tragedy itself. We observe that tragedy and New Comedy may have shared a certain mutual relationship as both have contributed to each other through the mere passing on of passages to more drastic forms such as subordinate characters. The integration and reconstruction of these two different genres came not as a surprise since such resembled the cinquecento and other components of the English Renaissance. As prominent figures like Shakespeare recognize a genre not as a set of rules but as a collection of possibilities and expectations, we have to consider how comedy is not without a darker side. Thus, this chapter looks into the balance of both negative and positive implications.
Hugh Gaston Hall
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151579
- eISBN:
- 9780191672743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151579.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
First performed by the Marais troupe, Jean Desmarets's second comedy, Les Visionnaires is his most successful work. The plot is simple. Alcidon, a complaisant father, has promised a daughter in ...
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First performed by the Marais troupe, Jean Desmarets's second comedy, Les Visionnaires is his most successful work. The plot is simple. Alcidon, a complaisant father, has promised a daughter in marriage to each of four obsessional male suitors; but he has only three daughters, each with her own obsession. These seven characters and the imprudent father are the visionnaires: Artabaze, the braggart Capitan, played by Bellemore; the ‘poète extravagant’ Amidor, played by Montdory; the ‘amoureux en idée’ Filidan; the ‘riche imaginaire’ Phalante, who describes in detail the new château de Richelieu; Melisse ‘amoureuse d'Alexandre le Grand’; Hesperie ‘qui croit que chacun l'aime’; and Sestiane, ‘amoureuse de la comédie’. All are contrasted with Alcidon's relative Lysandre, a raisonneur. The norms of obstacle comedy, tragicomedy, and pastoral are reversed, as the multiple hasty matches must be unmade in the denouement. No marriage takes place, because each of the visionnaires is too self-absorbed to make a match.Less
First performed by the Marais troupe, Jean Desmarets's second comedy, Les Visionnaires is his most successful work. The plot is simple. Alcidon, a complaisant father, has promised a daughter in marriage to each of four obsessional male suitors; but he has only three daughters, each with her own obsession. These seven characters and the imprudent father are the visionnaires: Artabaze, the braggart Capitan, played by Bellemore; the ‘poète extravagant’ Amidor, played by Montdory; the ‘amoureux en idée’ Filidan; the ‘riche imaginaire’ Phalante, who describes in detail the new château de Richelieu; Melisse ‘amoureuse d'Alexandre le Grand’; Hesperie ‘qui croit que chacun l'aime’; and Sestiane, ‘amoureuse de la comédie’. All are contrasted with Alcidon's relative Lysandre, a raisonneur. The norms of obstacle comedy, tragicomedy, and pastoral are reversed, as the multiple hasty matches must be unmade in the denouement. No marriage takes place, because each of the visionnaires is too self-absorbed to make a match.
Hugh Gaston Hall
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151579
- eISBN:
- 9780191672743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151579.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Prompted perhaps by Pierre Corneille's success with Le Cid, Jean Desmarets abandoned comedy for tragicomedy. Desmarets was elected on June 16 with Chapelain and the Abbé de Bourzeis, by the ...
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Prompted perhaps by Pierre Corneille's success with Le Cid, Jean Desmarets abandoned comedy for tragicomedy. Desmarets was elected on June 16 with Chapelain and the Abbé de Bourzeis, by the Académie-Française to the committee of three entrusted with general appreciation of Le Cid. Not surprisingly, in view of the success of Le Cid, Desmarets turned to tragicomedy and to an episode in the career of another virtuous conqueror of Spain, Scipio Africanus. Scipion, the first of Desmarets's two historical tragicomedies dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, shares with Ariane and Le Cid a conquering hero of noble origins and royal aspirations. Scipion also shares with Le Cid the specific themes of self-mastery and of marriage for reasons of State. Desmarets's second tragicomedy, Roxane, was first performed on an unknown date in 1639.Less
Prompted perhaps by Pierre Corneille's success with Le Cid, Jean Desmarets abandoned comedy for tragicomedy. Desmarets was elected on June 16 with Chapelain and the Abbé de Bourzeis, by the Académie-Française to the committee of three entrusted with general appreciation of Le Cid. Not surprisingly, in view of the success of Le Cid, Desmarets turned to tragicomedy and to an episode in the career of another virtuous conqueror of Spain, Scipio Africanus. Scipion, the first of Desmarets's two historical tragicomedies dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, shares with Ariane and Le Cid a conquering hero of noble origins and royal aspirations. Scipion also shares with Le Cid the specific themes of self-mastery and of marriage for reasons of State. Desmarets's second tragicomedy, Roxane, was first performed on an unknown date in 1639.
Edith Hall
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195392890
- eISBN:
- 9780199979257
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195392890.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This monograph is a cultural history of the performance, reception and influence of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. First produced in the late 5th century BCE in Athens, ...
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This monograph is a cultural history of the performance, reception and influence of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. First produced in the late 5th century BCE in Athens, this play was one of the most influential of all the canonical classical dramas in antiquity until the fourth century CE and in the period between the Renaissance and the early 20th century. It dramatises the escape of the Greek siblings Iphigenia and Orestes, with Orestes' friend Pylades, from the barbarian community of the Taurians on the north coast of the Black Sea, bringing with them an ancient statue of Artemis. The book explores the extent and diversity of the play's cultural impact diachronically. Its first half documents and analyses the reasons for the popularity of the play in antiquity, appearing in Greek and Roman poetry, fiction, philosophy, vase-painting, murals, sarcophagus art, and on coins. The second half discusses the influence of the play since the Renaissance, with particular attention to Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, Frazer's The Golden Bough, Gilbert Murray's Edwardian translation and more recent feminist and postcolonial adaptations.Less
This monograph is a cultural history of the performance, reception and influence of the ancient Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. First produced in the late 5th century BCE in Athens, this play was one of the most influential of all the canonical classical dramas in antiquity until the fourth century CE and in the period between the Renaissance and the early 20th century. It dramatises the escape of the Greek siblings Iphigenia and Orestes, with Orestes' friend Pylades, from the barbarian community of the Taurians on the north coast of the Black Sea, bringing with them an ancient statue of Artemis. The book explores the extent and diversity of the play's cultural impact diachronically. Its first half documents and analyses the reasons for the popularity of the play in antiquity, appearing in Greek and Roman poetry, fiction, philosophy, vase-painting, murals, sarcophagus art, and on coins. The second half discusses the influence of the play since the Renaissance, with particular attention to Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, Frazer's The Golden Bough, Gilbert Murray's Edwardian translation and more recent feminist and postcolonial adaptations.
MACD. P. JACKSON
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199260508
- eISBN:
- 9780191717635
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199260508.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter provides an introduction to Pericles and the Shakespeare canon. Pericles, it is widely agreed, is the first of Shakespeare's ‘last plays’, that highly distinctive group of romances and ...
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This chapter provides an introduction to Pericles and the Shakespeare canon. Pericles, it is widely agreed, is the first of Shakespeare's ‘last plays’, that highly distinctive group of romances and tragicomedies. However, it was omitted from the First Folio collection of his plays assembled by his friends and fellow actors after his death and published in 1623. The very gateway to the final period of Shakespeare's playwrighting career is thus obstructed by thorny problems of text and authorship. Investigation of the authorship of Pericles can scarcely be disentangled from broader issues concerning the Shakespeare canon as a whole and the methods by which it is most convincingly to be defined. T.S. Eliot held that ‘the full meaning of any one’ of Shakespeare's plays ‘is not in itself alone, but in that play in the order in which it was written, in its relation to all of Shakespeare's other plays’.Less
This chapter provides an introduction to Pericles and the Shakespeare canon. Pericles, it is widely agreed, is the first of Shakespeare's ‘last plays’, that highly distinctive group of romances and tragicomedies. However, it was omitted from the First Folio collection of his plays assembled by his friends and fellow actors after his death and published in 1623. The very gateway to the final period of Shakespeare's playwrighting career is thus obstructed by thorny problems of text and authorship. Investigation of the authorship of Pericles can scarcely be disentangled from broader issues concerning the Shakespeare canon as a whole and the methods by which it is most convincingly to be defined. T.S. Eliot held that ‘the full meaning of any one’ of Shakespeare's plays ‘is not in itself alone, but in that play in the order in which it was written, in its relation to all of Shakespeare's other plays’.
Katharine Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199252534
- eISBN:
- 9780191719226
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199252534.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter discusses Greene's two long pastoral fictions, Pandosto (1588) and Menaphon. These texts bear an intriguing relationship to Sidney's Old Arcadia (c.1580), then only circulating in ...
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This chapter discusses Greene's two long pastoral fictions, Pandosto (1588) and Menaphon. These texts bear an intriguing relationship to Sidney's Old Arcadia (c.1580), then only circulating in manuscript, and the chapter includes a discussion of the likely relationship of the texts. But Greene had many other literary influences, including William Warner and Lyly's drama. While continuing to hone his skills in tragicomedy, Greene increasingly used his sources and influences to satirical effect. In Pandosto Greene created a sensational incest narrative, which he effectively rewrote in Menaphon as comedy. The pastoral landscape Greene depicted in the latter text is full of literary comparisons, including the tale of Troy, and his personae seem intensely aware of the need to discover their literary identity.Less
This chapter discusses Greene's two long pastoral fictions, Pandosto (1588) and Menaphon. These texts bear an intriguing relationship to Sidney's Old Arcadia (c.1580), then only circulating in manuscript, and the chapter includes a discussion of the likely relationship of the texts. But Greene had many other literary influences, including William Warner and Lyly's drama. While continuing to hone his skills in tragicomedy, Greene increasingly used his sources and influences to satirical effect. In Pandosto Greene created a sensational incest narrative, which he effectively rewrote in Menaphon as comedy. The pastoral landscape Greene depicted in the latter text is full of literary comparisons, including the tale of Troy, and his personae seem intensely aware of the need to discover their literary identity.
REGINE MAY
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199202928
- eISBN:
- 9780191707957
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199202928.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter attempts to link the tale of Cupid and Psyche with drama. It shows that Apuleius includes both comic and tragic elements in the same plot, and by doing so directs his readers’ sympathies ...
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This chapter attempts to link the tale of Cupid and Psyche with drama. It shows that Apuleius includes both comic and tragic elements in the same plot, and by doing so directs his readers’ sympathies in different directions. The alignment of Psyche with tragic heroines allows the reader to feel her sufferings with her, but at the end the marriage and the birth of her child is the just reward of a sympathetic character in comedy. Venus becomes less terrifying once she drops the attitude of the vengeful deity in order to scold like a common matron and aligns herself with comic stereotypes. Cupid’s passivity is more easily understood as that of the comic adulescens, and the sisters of Psyche, too, gain from theatrical characterization.Less
This chapter attempts to link the tale of Cupid and Psyche with drama. It shows that Apuleius includes both comic and tragic elements in the same plot, and by doing so directs his readers’ sympathies in different directions. The alignment of Psyche with tragic heroines allows the reader to feel her sufferings with her, but at the end the marriage and the birth of her child is the just reward of a sympathetic character in comedy. Venus becomes less terrifying once she drops the attitude of the vengeful deity in order to scold like a common matron and aligns herself with comic stereotypes. Cupid’s passivity is more easily understood as that of the comic adulescens, and the sisters of Psyche, too, gain from theatrical characterization.
Emma Gilby
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198831891
- eISBN:
- 9780191869723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198831891.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Descartes’s Fictions traces common movements in early modern philosophy and literary method. This volume reassesses the significance of Descartes’s writing by bringing his philosophical output into ...
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Descartes’s Fictions traces common movements in early modern philosophy and literary method. This volume reassesses the significance of Descartes’s writing by bringing his philosophical output into contact with the literary treatises, exempla, and debates of his age. Arguing that humanist theorizing about the art of poetry represents a vital intellectual context for Descartes’s work, the volume offers readings of the controversies to which this poetic theory gives rise, with particular reference to the genre of tragicomedy, the question of verisimilitude, and the figures of Guez de Balzac and Pierre Corneille. Drawing on what Descartes says about, and to, his many contemporaries and correspondents embedded in the early modern republic of letters, this volume shows that poetics provides a repository of themes and images to which he returns repeatedly: fortune, method, error, providence, passion, and imagination, amongst others. Like the poets and theorists of the early modern period, Descartes is also drawn to the forms of attention that people may bring to his work. This interest finds expression in the mature Cartesian metaphysics of the Meditations, as well as, later, in the moral philosophy of his correspondence with Elisabeth of Bohemia or the Passions of the Soul. Some of the tropes of modern secondary criticism—a comparison of Descartes and Corneille, or the portrayal of Descartes as a ‘tragic’ figure—are also re-evaluated. This volume thus bridges the gap between Cartesian criticism and late-humanist literary culture in France.Less
Descartes’s Fictions traces common movements in early modern philosophy and literary method. This volume reassesses the significance of Descartes’s writing by bringing his philosophical output into contact with the literary treatises, exempla, and debates of his age. Arguing that humanist theorizing about the art of poetry represents a vital intellectual context for Descartes’s work, the volume offers readings of the controversies to which this poetic theory gives rise, with particular reference to the genre of tragicomedy, the question of verisimilitude, and the figures of Guez de Balzac and Pierre Corneille. Drawing on what Descartes says about, and to, his many contemporaries and correspondents embedded in the early modern republic of letters, this volume shows that poetics provides a repository of themes and images to which he returns repeatedly: fortune, method, error, providence, passion, and imagination, amongst others. Like the poets and theorists of the early modern period, Descartes is also drawn to the forms of attention that people may bring to his work. This interest finds expression in the mature Cartesian metaphysics of the Meditations, as well as, later, in the moral philosophy of his correspondence with Elisabeth of Bohemia or the Passions of the Soul. Some of the tropes of modern secondary criticism—a comparison of Descartes and Corneille, or the portrayal of Descartes as a ‘tragic’ figure—are also re-evaluated. This volume thus bridges the gap between Cartesian criticism and late-humanist literary culture in France.
Jason Lawrence
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719069147
- eISBN:
- 9781781702543
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719069147.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book offers a comprehensive account of the methods and practice of learning modern languages, particularly Italian, in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It suggests that ...
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This book offers a comprehensive account of the methods and practice of learning modern languages, particularly Italian, in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It suggests that there is a fundamental connection between these language-learning habits and the techniques for both reading and imitating Italian materials employed by a range of poets and dramatists, such as Daniel, Drummond, Marston and Shakespeare, in this period. The widespread use of bilingual parallel-text instruction manuals from the 1570s onwards, most notably those of the Italian teacher John Florio, highlights the importance of translation in the language-learning process. More advanced students attempt translation exercises from Italian poetry to increase their linguistic fluency, but even beginners are encouraged to use the translations in these manuals as a means of careful parallel reading. This study emphasises the impact of both aspects of language-learning translation on contemporary habits of literary imitation, in its detailed analyses of Daniel's sonnet sequence ‘Delia’ and his pastoral tragicomedies, and Shakespeare's use of Italian materials in Measure for Measure and Othello. By focusing on Shakespeare as a typical language-learner of the period (one who is certainly familiar with Florio's two manuals), it argues that the playwright was clearly influenced by these Italian reading practices.Less
This book offers a comprehensive account of the methods and practice of learning modern languages, particularly Italian, in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. It suggests that there is a fundamental connection between these language-learning habits and the techniques for both reading and imitating Italian materials employed by a range of poets and dramatists, such as Daniel, Drummond, Marston and Shakespeare, in this period. The widespread use of bilingual parallel-text instruction manuals from the 1570s onwards, most notably those of the Italian teacher John Florio, highlights the importance of translation in the language-learning process. More advanced students attempt translation exercises from Italian poetry to increase their linguistic fluency, but even beginners are encouraged to use the translations in these manuals as a means of careful parallel reading. This study emphasises the impact of both aspects of language-learning translation on contemporary habits of literary imitation, in its detailed analyses of Daniel's sonnet sequence ‘Delia’ and his pastoral tragicomedies, and Shakespeare's use of Italian materials in Measure for Measure and Othello. By focusing on Shakespeare as a typical language-learner of the period (one who is certainly familiar with Florio's two manuals), it argues that the playwright was clearly influenced by these Italian reading practices.
Bernadette Meyler
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501739330
- eISBN:
- 9781501739392
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501739330.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
To address the roots of pardoning’s treatment in contemporary politics and uncover what new formulations of pardoning might contribute, this book examines the role of what it calls “theaters of ...
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To address the roots of pardoning’s treatment in contemporary politics and uncover what new formulations of pardoning might contribute, this book examines the role of what it calls “theaters of pardoning”—a form of tragicomedy—in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Historically, shifts in the representation of pardoning tracked the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty. On stage, a transformation surreptitiously took place from individual pardons of revenge to more sweeping pardons of revolution. The change can be traced from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to later works like Philip Massinger’s The Bondman. In the political arena, the pardon correspondingly came to be envisioned in increasingly law-like terms, culminating in the idea of a general amnesty, or “Act of Oblivion,” implemented by the Restoration Parliament under King Charles II. The figuration of pardoning as lawgiving did not eliminate its connection with sovereignty but instead displaced sovereignty from the King onto Parliament. The link between pardoning and sovereignty has contributed to the suspicion that has more recently surrounded the exercise of pardoning. Only by breaking the connection between pardoning and sovereignty cemented in seventeenth-century England can we reinvigorate pardoning in the polity today.Less
To address the roots of pardoning’s treatment in contemporary politics and uncover what new formulations of pardoning might contribute, this book examines the role of what it calls “theaters of pardoning”—a form of tragicomedy—in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Historically, shifts in the representation of pardoning tracked the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty. On stage, a transformation surreptitiously took place from individual pardons of revenge to more sweeping pardons of revolution. The change can be traced from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to later works like Philip Massinger’s The Bondman. In the political arena, the pardon correspondingly came to be envisioned in increasingly law-like terms, culminating in the idea of a general amnesty, or “Act of Oblivion,” implemented by the Restoration Parliament under King Charles II. The figuration of pardoning as lawgiving did not eliminate its connection with sovereignty but instead displaced sovereignty from the King onto Parliament. The link between pardoning and sovereignty has contributed to the suspicion that has more recently surrounded the exercise of pardoning. Only by breaking the connection between pardoning and sovereignty cemented in seventeenth-century England can we reinvigorate pardoning in the polity today.
Bernadette Meyler
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501739330
- eISBN:
- 9781501739392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501739330.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction draws on theories of genre and existing work in early modern law and literature to define the attributes and explain the significance of theaters of pardoning. Demonstrating the ...
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The introduction draws on theories of genre and existing work in early modern law and literature to define the attributes and explain the significance of theaters of pardoning. Demonstrating the surprisingly significant number of seventeenth-century English plays that end with pardons, the introduction identifies these forms of tragicomedy as theaters of pardoning. It also emphasizes how the historical interrelations among the institutions and actors of law, drama, and politics in seventeenth-century England brought conceptions of pardoning from theater to law court to palace and back.Less
The introduction draws on theories of genre and existing work in early modern law and literature to define the attributes and explain the significance of theaters of pardoning. Demonstrating the surprisingly significant number of seventeenth-century English plays that end with pardons, the introduction identifies these forms of tragicomedy as theaters of pardoning. It also emphasizes how the historical interrelations among the institutions and actors of law, drama, and politics in seventeenth-century England brought conceptions of pardoning from theater to law court to palace and back.
Bernadette Meyler
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781501739330
- eISBN:
- 9781501739392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501739330.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was staged before King James I in 1604 and could have provided a model of mercy for his response to the infamous Gunpowder Plot—Guy Fawkes’s attempt along with other ...
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Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was staged before King James I in 1604 and could have provided a model of mercy for his response to the infamous Gunpowder Plot—Guy Fawkes’s attempt along with other Catholics to demolish the Houses of Parliament. Instead, James’s response to the plot adopted another kind of tragicomic form, that associated with John of Patmos’s Revelation. Before the age of twenty, James had penned a Paraphrase upon the Reuelation and his contemporaries often interpreted the Book of Revelation as a kind of tragicomedy. Yet this variety of tragicomedy did not end happily for everyone—only for the elect, including James himself.Less
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was staged before King James I in 1604 and could have provided a model of mercy for his response to the infamous Gunpowder Plot—Guy Fawkes’s attempt along with other Catholics to demolish the Houses of Parliament. Instead, James’s response to the plot adopted another kind of tragicomic form, that associated with John of Patmos’s Revelation. Before the age of twenty, James had penned a Paraphrase upon the Reuelation and his contemporaries often interpreted the Book of Revelation as a kind of tragicomedy. Yet this variety of tragicomedy did not end happily for everyone—only for the elect, including James himself.
David Holton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474403795
- eISBN:
- 9781474435130
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474403795.003.0021
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine ...
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Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine (the biblical drama Abraham’s Sacrifice) and a pastoral idyll with a tragic outcome (The Shepherdess), while Kornaros’ verse romance Erotokritos plays with the possibility of a tragic ending before settling for the outcome proper to romance. This intermingling of the tragic and the comic – of tears and laughter – is common in Cretan Renaissance literature, and most fully realised in the new hybrid genre of tragicommedia pastorale, which seems to have been popular in Crete around 1600. Taking Panoria by Georgios Chortatsis as its main textual focus, this chapter explores the interaction of tears and laughter both at a textual level and in plot structure. While the theoretical bases of tragicomedy, as propounded by Guarini, clearly underpin works like Panoria, in the case of works belonging to other genres other factors are involved: Petrarchising tropes, which are common in Cretan literature, and the antithetical structures characteristic of the folk tradition. Panoria, set on Mount Ida, is thoroughly Cretan and at the same time thoroughly imbued with late-Renaissance poetics.Less
Greek tragedy and comedy re-emerge in late sixteenth-century Crete, now based on Renaissance neo-classical prescriptions. Besides ‘pure’ examples of the genres we also find a tragedia di lieto fine (the biblical drama Abraham’s Sacrifice) and a pastoral idyll with a tragic outcome (The Shepherdess), while Kornaros’ verse romance Erotokritos plays with the possibility of a tragic ending before settling for the outcome proper to romance. This intermingling of the tragic and the comic – of tears and laughter – is common in Cretan Renaissance literature, and most fully realised in the new hybrid genre of tragicommedia pastorale, which seems to have been popular in Crete around 1600. Taking Panoria by Georgios Chortatsis as its main textual focus, this chapter explores the interaction of tears and laughter both at a textual level and in plot structure. While the theoretical bases of tragicomedy, as propounded by Guarini, clearly underpin works like Panoria, in the case of works belonging to other genres other factors are involved: Petrarchising tropes, which are common in Cretan literature, and the antithetical structures characteristic of the folk tradition. Panoria, set on Mount Ida, is thoroughly Cretan and at the same time thoroughly imbued with late-Renaissance poetics.
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226144191
- eISBN:
- 9780226144214
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226144214.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines the life of Marie-Catherine Desjardins, known as Madame de Villedieu, a prolific writer who not only played an important role in the evolution of the early modern novel in ...
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This chapter examines the life of Marie-Catherine Desjardins, known as Madame de Villedieu, a prolific writer who not only played an important role in the evolution of the early modern novel in France, but also wrote poetry and plays. Her pseudo-autobiographical novel, Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Molière, offers readers an unconventional and enterprising woman protagonist. The novel is innovative in its presentation of a love story that does not end with the marriage of hero and heroine. Through her protagonist's use of disguise, Villedieu explores gender roles, and in portraying a woman who is herself writing her life story, she calls into question the way in which women's writing was read in early modern Europe. Known principally as a love poet at this point in her career, Desjardins turned her attention to the theater, and in 1662 one of the principal theatrical troupes in Paris produced her tragicomedy Manlius.Less
This chapter examines the life of Marie-Catherine Desjardins, known as Madame de Villedieu, a prolific writer who not only played an important role in the evolution of the early modern novel in France, but also wrote poetry and plays. Her pseudo-autobiographical novel, Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Molière, offers readers an unconventional and enterprising woman protagonist. The novel is innovative in its presentation of a love story that does not end with the marriage of hero and heroine. Through her protagonist's use of disguise, Villedieu explores gender roles, and in portraying a woman who is herself writing her life story, she calls into question the way in which women's writing was read in early modern Europe. Known principally as a love poet at this point in her career, Desjardins turned her attention to the theater, and in 1662 one of the principal theatrical troupes in Paris produced her tragicomedy Manlius.
Bradin Cormack
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226116242
- eISBN:
- 9780226116259
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226116259.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Focusing on William Shakespeare's Pericles (1609) and Cymbeline (ca. 1610), this chapter explores a virtual jurisdiction constitutive of empire. Shakespearean romantic tragicomedy emerges here as an ...
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Focusing on William Shakespeare's Pericles (1609) and Cymbeline (ca. 1610), this chapter explores a virtual jurisdiction constitutive of empire. Shakespearean romantic tragicomedy emerges here as an extended engagement with the idea of jurisdiction as it came under pressure in consequence, first, of the union of the Scottish and English Crowns in 1603, and, second, of the changing status of the ocean as an international space of trade. Shakespeare's plays belong to a moment when transnational authority was imagined as the legal effect not of dominium (ownership) but of imperium, a jurisdictional relationship and process. Accordingly, the chapter argues that they engage the scene of international politics by taking up the shape of jurisdictional crisis itself. Pericles and Cymbeline reach toward a theoretical account of the jurisdictional principle they thematize, at the same time as they represent a deterritorialization of legal identity that transforms jurisdiction into a principle to serve a new kind of power.Less
Focusing on William Shakespeare's Pericles (1609) and Cymbeline (ca. 1610), this chapter explores a virtual jurisdiction constitutive of empire. Shakespearean romantic tragicomedy emerges here as an extended engagement with the idea of jurisdiction as it came under pressure in consequence, first, of the union of the Scottish and English Crowns in 1603, and, second, of the changing status of the ocean as an international space of trade. Shakespeare's plays belong to a moment when transnational authority was imagined as the legal effect not of dominium (ownership) but of imperium, a jurisdictional relationship and process. Accordingly, the chapter argues that they engage the scene of international politics by taking up the shape of jurisdictional crisis itself. Pericles and Cymbeline reach toward a theoretical account of the jurisdictional principle they thematize, at the same time as they represent a deterritorialization of legal identity that transforms jurisdiction into a principle to serve a new kind of power.
