Writing on the Renaissance Stage

Writing on the Renaissance Stage

Author: Frederick Kiefer

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 9780874135954

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Playwrights also made extraordinary use of metaphors involving the written and printed word to describe the workings of the mind and the interaction of people.


Renaissance Fun

Renaissance Fun

Author: Philip Steadman

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1787359158

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Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly across the sky? How were seas created on stage? How did mechanical birds imitate real birdsong? What was ‘artificial music’, three centuries before Edison and the phonograph? How could pipe organs be driven and made to play themselves by waterpower alone? And who were the architects, engineers, and craftsmen who created these wonders? All these questions are answered. At the end of the book we visit the lost ‘garden of marvels’ at Pratolino with its many grottoes, automata and water jokes; and we attend the performance of Mercury and Mars in Parma in 1628, with its spectacular stage effects and its music by Claudio Monteverdi – one of the places where opera was born. Renaissance Fun is offered as an entertainment in itself. But behind the show is a more serious scholarly argument, centred on the enormous influence of two ancient writers on these subjects, Vitruvius and Hero. Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture were widely studied by Renaissance theatre designers. Hero of Alexandria wrote the Pneumatics, a collection of designs for surprising and entertaining devices that were the models for sixteenth and seventeenth century automata. A second book by Hero On Automata-Making – much less well known, then and now – describes two miniature theatres that presented plays without human intervention. One of these, it is argued, provided the model for the type of proscenium theatre introduced from the mid-sixteenth century, the generic design which is still built today. As the influence of Vitruvius waned, the influence of Hero grew.


Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance

Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance

Author: Katharine Eisaman Maus

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1995-06

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780226511238

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This text explores the perceived discrepancy between outward appearance and inward disposition which, it argues, influenced the work of many English Renaissance dramatists and poets. The author examines various connections between religious, legal, sexual and theatrical ideas of inward truth.


Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context

Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context

Author: Andrew Lynch

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1443808407

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Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context is a stimulating refereed collection of new work dedicated to Emeritus Professor Christopher Wortham of The University of Western Australia. The essays provide a rich context for the interdisciplinary study of the English Renaissance, from its medieval antecedents to its modern afterlife on stage and screen. Their up-to-date engagement with many scholarly fields - art and iconography, cartography, cultural and social history, literature, politics, theatre, and film - will ensure that this book makes a valuable contribution to contemporary Renaissance studies, with a special interest for those researching and teaching English literature and drama. The nineteen contributors include distinguished Renaissance scholars such as Ann Blake, Graham Bradshaw, Alan Brissenden, Conal Condren, Joost Daalder, Heather Dubrow, Philippa Kelly, Anthony Miller, Kay Gililand Stevenson, Robert White, and Lawrence Wright. Work on Shakespeare forms the core of this coherent collection. There are also significant essays on Magnificence, Donne, Marlowe, A Yorkshire Tragedy, Jonson, Marvell, the Ferrars of Little Gidding, and female conduct literature. hardbound with dust jacket; xii+353 pp; 18 b/w illustrations.


Reading the Renaissance

Reading the Renaissance

Author: Jonathan Locke Hart

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780815323556

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First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Handbook of English Renaissance Literature

Handbook of English Renaissance Literature

Author: Ingo Berensmeyer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 748

ISBN-13: 3110444887

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This handbook of English Renaissance literature serves as a reference for both students and scholars, introducing recent debates and developments in early modern studies. Using new theoretical perspectives and methodological tools, the volume offers exemplary close readings of canonical and less well-known texts from all significant genres between c. 1480 and 1660. Its systematic chapters address questions about editing Renaissance texts, the role of translation, theatre and drama, life-writing, science, travel and migration, and women as writers, readers and patrons. The book will be of particular interest to those wishing to expand their knowledge of the early modern period beyond Shakespeare.


History of the Florentine People: Books 5-8

History of the Florentine People: Books 5-8

Author: Leonardo Bruni

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 9780674010666

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Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), the leading civic humanist of the Italian Renaissance, served as apostolic secretary to four popes (1405-1414) and chancellor of Florence (1427-1444). He was famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, and was the best-selling author of the fifteenth century. Bruni's History of the Florentine People in twelve books is generally considered the first modern work of history, and was widely imitated by humanist historians for two centuries after its official publication by the Florentine Signoria in 1442. This edition makes it available for the first time in English translation.


The Place of the Stage

The Place of the Stage

Author: Steven Mullaney

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9780472083466

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Probes English society in the age of Shakespeare


The Chef's Secret

The Chef's Secret

Author: Crystal King

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-02-12

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1501196448

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A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died. When Bartolomeo Scappi dies in 1577, he leaves his vast estate—properties, money, and his position—to his nephew and apprentice Giovanni. He also gives Giovanni the keys to two strongboxes and strict instructions to burn their contents. Despite Scappi’s dire warning that the information concealed in those boxes could put Giovanni’s life and others at risk, Giovanni is compelled to learn his uncle’s secrets. He undertakes the arduous task of decoding Scappi’s journals and uncovers a history of deception, betrayal, and murder—all to protect an illicit love affair. As Giovanni pieces together the details of Scappi’s past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces—his brother Cesare and Scappi’s former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef’s recipes. With luscious prose that captures the full scale of the sumptuous feasts for which Scappi was known, The Chef’s Secret serves up power, intrigue, and passion, bringing Renaissance Italy to life in a delectable fashion.


The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama

The Italian World of English Renaissance Drama

Author: A. J. Hoenselaars

Publisher: University of Delaware Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780874136388

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It is widely accepted that English Renaissance drama owes its extraordinary richness and variety to the blending of elements originating from the medieval heritage and classical and Italian dramatic traditions. This grafting of the "Italian world" onto the English Renaissance goes far beyond the conventional research of the literary sources. The articles in this collection explore English Renaissance drama through new and challenging aspects of influence and through investigations into classical and Italian theater. The volume moves from early Elizabethan to late Jacobean drama. The area of research ranges from New Classical Comedy to commedia erudita, from the Renaissance theory of tragedy and tragicomedy to the birth of pastoral drama and beyond.