Experimentation on the English Stage, 1695-1708

Experimentation on the English Stage, 1695-1708

Author: Elisabeth J Heard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-30

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1317303423

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, British theatre saw a shift from what critics call 'Restoration' to 'sentimental' comedy. Focusing on the career of the Irish dramatist George Farquhar (1678-1707), this book argues that experimentation was the basis for this change.


Early Modern Trauma

Early Modern Trauma

Author: Erin Peters

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2021-08

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1496208919

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This edited collection explores what trauma—seen through an analytical lens—can reveal about the early modern period and, conversely, what conceptualizations of psychological trauma from the period can tell us about trauma theory itself.


Historical Dictionary of British Theatre

Historical Dictionary of British Theatre

Author: Darryll Grantley

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2013-10-10

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 0810880288

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

British theatre has a greater tradition than any other, having started all the way back in 1311 and still going strong today. But that is too much for one book to cover, so this volume deals with early theatre and has a cut-off date in 1899. Still, this is almost six centuries, centuries during which British theatre not only developed but produced some of the greatest playwrights of all time and anywhere, including obviously Shakespeare but also Marlowe and Shaw. And they wrote some of the finest plays ever, which are known around the world. So there is plenty for this book to cover, just with the playwrights, plays and actors, but it also has information on stagecraft and theatres, as well as the historical and political background. This book has over 1,183 entries in the dictionary section, these being mainly on playwrights and plays, but others as well including managers and critics, and also on specific theatres, legislative acts and some technical jargon. Then there are entries on the different genres, from comedy to tragedy and everything in between. Inevitably, the chronology is quite long as it has a long period to cover and the introduction provides the necessary overview. The Historical Dictionary of Early British Theatre concludes with a pretty massive bibliography. That will be of use to particularly assiduous researchers, but this book itself is a good place to start any research since it covers periods that are far less well-known and documented, and ordinary theatre-goers will also find useful information.


The Other Exchange

The Other Exchange

Author: Denys Van Renen

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0803280998

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The Other Exchange investigates the ways in which English literature represents women, masterless men, and foreigners in the economic and sociocultural foundation of the development of middle-class consciousness in early modern England"--


Irish Anglican Literature and Drama

Irish Anglican Literature and Drama

Author: David Clare

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-05-19

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 3030683532

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book discusses key works by important writers from Church of Ireland backgrounds (from Farquhar and Swift to Beckett and Bardwell), in order to demonstrate that writers from this Irish subculture have a unique socio-political viewpoint which is imperfectly understood. The Anglican Ascendancy was historically referred to as a “middle nation” between Ireland and Britain, and this book is an examination of the various ways in which Irish Anglican writers have signalled their Irish/British hybridity. “British” elements in their work are pointed out, but so are manifestations of their proud Irishness and what Elizabeth Bowen called her community’s “subtle ... anti-Englishness.” Crucially, this book discusses several writers often excluded from the “truly” Irish canon, including (among others) Laurence Sterne, Elizabeth Griffith, and C.S. Lewis.


The Recruiting Officer

The Recruiting Officer

Author: George Farquhar

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-29

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1408152657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This completely new edition of The Recruiting Officer contains a freshly-edited play text, with new annotations, in modern spelling. Tiffany Stern's comprehensive and engaging introduction discusses the author's career and gives a history of the play including its staging, critical interpretation, date and sources, putting it its context of the late Restoration and illuminating its theatrical vivacity. Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer is set in Shrewsbury in 1704 and describes what happens in a country town when the army come to stay. With cross-dressing and confusion in plenty, this is a comedy exploring the timeless themes of love and war. One of Farquhar's last two plays, The Recruiting Officer is both entertaining and touching. It has a light, humane touch and its original depiction of a real-life provincial town comically explores the impact that ongoing warfare had on its civilian society.


A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics

A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics

Author: Karin Kukkonen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-03-06

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190654511

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This study provides an introduction to the neoclassical debates around how literature is shaped in concert with the thinking and feeling human mind. Three key rules of neoclassicism, namely, poetic justice (the rewards and punishments of characters in the plot), the unities (the coherence of the fictional world and its extensions through the imagination) and decorum (the inferential connections between characters and their likely actions), are reconsidered in light of social cognition, embodied cognition and probabilistic, predictive cognition. The meeting between neoclassical criticism and today's research psychology, neurology and philosophy of mind yields a new perspective for cognitive literary study. Neoclassicism has a crucial contribution to make to current debates around the role of literature in cultural and cognition. Literary critics writing at the time of the scientific revolution developed a perspective on literature the question of how literature engages minds and bodies as its central concern. A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics traces the cognitive dimension of these critical debates in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and puts them into conversation with today's cognitive approaches to literature. Neoclassical theory is then connected to the praxis of eighteenth-century writers in a series of case studies that trace how these principles shaped the emerging narrative form of the novel. The continuing relevance of neoclassicism also shows itself in the rise of the novel, as A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics illustrates through examples including Pamela, Tom Jones and the Gothic novel.


The Plays and Poems of Nicholas Rowe, Volume I

The Plays and Poems of Nicholas Rowe, Volume I

Author: Stephen Bernard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1134981007

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nicholas Rowe was the first Poet Laureate of the Georgian era. A fascinating and important yet largely overlooked figure in eighteenth-century literature, he is the ‘lost Augustan’. His plays are important both for the way they address the political and social concerns of the day and for reflecting a period in which the theatre was in crisis. This edition sets out to demonstrate Rowe’s mastery of the early eighteenth century theatre, especially his providing significant roles for women, and examines the political and historical stances of his plays. It also highlights his work as a translator, which was both innovative and deeply in tune with current practices as exemplified by John Dryden and Alexander Pope. This is the first scholarly edition of all Rowe’s plays and poems and is accompanied by 15 musical scores and 31 black and white illustrations. In this first volume, a general introduction by Stephen Bernard and Michael Caines introduces Rowe's works and the five volumes that comprise this set. It then presents the early plays, The Ambitious Step-Mother, Tamerlane, and The Fair Penitent along with a newly written explanatory introduction by Rebecca Bullard and John McTague which precedes the full edited text. Appendices covering dedications performance history, the related music and textual apparatus are also included. A consolidated bibliography is included with the final volume for ease of reference.


The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature

The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature

Author: Matthew C. Augustine

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-10-22

Total Pages: 801

ISBN-13: 0192690884

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature begins by asking if there was a distinctive literature of the Restoration. For a long time, the answer seemed obvious: heroic drama, libertine comedy, scandalous lyrics, and the short but brilliant career of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester. Could there be an age when the coincidence of literary culture and political rule were any more obvious? But as this Handbook will remind us, some of the most wonderful literature of this Restoration came from writers who had lived across the decades of turbulence and into an age when the Stuart kings returned, when the Church and House of Lords were restored, a world made safe for bishops and for the memory of divine right rule. Of course, these returns and restorations did not meet with uniform celebration. John Milton wrote his great epic poems not in quiet submission but in a kind of resistance to the dominant culture of the 1660s, and Andrew Marvell produced his most brilliant satiric verse by holding up a looking glass to court corruption and Anglican intolerance. So we begin with the most obvious conclusion: Restoration literature does and does not fit to the categories that so long defined the late Stuart age. This book explores and contests, challenges and reimagines the experience embodied by the writing of the late Stuart world and invites readers new to this world and those who have often read its literatures to the pleasures but as well to the challenges and discomforts of its texts.