Reading the Renaissance: Culture, Poetics, and Drama

by Jonathan Hart (Editor)

Overview

Approaching the Renaissance from many perspectives-historicism, genre studies, close reading, anthropology, feminism, new historicism, cultural materialism and postmodernism-these original essays explore the boundaries between genre and gender, languages and literatures, reading and criticism, the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, the early modern and the post-modern, world and theater. They offer a new way of looking at the Renaissance and at literature and history generally-through the lens of cultural pluralism, which reflects the changing nature of Western society. The collection reveals that the study of literature should take into account its cultural context and that it is enriched by an examination of other literatures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815323556
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/01/1996
Series:	Garland Studies in the Renaissance , #4
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jonathan Hart has been a Visiting Fellow or Visiting Scholar at Toronto, Harvard, and Cambridge. His books include Theater and World: The Problematics of Shakespeare's History (1992), Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination (1994), and (edited with Richard Bauman) Explorations in Difference: Law, Culture and Politics (1995).

Table of Contents

Reading the Renaissance: An Introduction, The Text, the Reader, and the Self, Ritual and Text in the Renaissance, Reading in the French Renaissance: Textual Communities, Boredom, Privacy, Reading Ultima Verba: Commemoration and Friendship in Montaigne's Writing, Gender and Genre, Gender Ideologies, Women Writers, and the Problem of Patronage in Early Modern Italy and France: Issues and Frameworks, Female Transvestism and Male Self-Fashioning in As You Like It and La vida es sueño, Continuities and Discontinuities, The Ends of Renaissance Comedy, Troilus and Cressida: Voices in the Darkness of Troy, Two Tents on Bosworth Field: Richard III V.iii, iv, v, As They Did in the Golden World: Romantic Rapture and Semantic Rupture in As You Like It, Anticipations, Noble Deeds and the Secret Singularity: Hamlet and Phèdre, Narrative and Theatre: From Manuel Puig to Lope de Vega, Notes, Works Cited, Contributors, Index

Editorial Reviews

A pluralistic and comparative treatment of European literature from about 1485 to about 1660. Emphasizes boundaries such as those between genre and gender, languages and literatures, reading and criticism, and the Renaissance and its bracketing periods. Among the topics are ritual and text, boredom and privacy, women writers and the problem of patronage, female transvestism and male self-fashioning, and the ends of Renaissance comedy. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"Graduate students and faculty need to have this volume on hand." — Choice

From the Publisher