Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe
Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe
$45.00
USDThis book analyzes the discourses and practices that defined Renaissance theater, as related to the development of encyclopedic texts and vice versa. Looking at what "theater" meant to medieval and Renaissance writers and critics, William West sets Renaissance drama within one of its cultural and intellectual contexts. Although the study focuses on the Renaissance, it also draws on and analyzes substantial classical and medieval material. It is of equal interest to intellectual historians, theater historians and students of early literature.
- Considers the relationship between the development of the Encyclopedia as a collection of all known knowledge and how theatre was written and performed at the time
- Discusses several widely taught texts: Marlowe's Dr Faustus, Jonson's The Alchemist, among others, in terms of theatre and Encyclopedia connection
- Looks at concept of 'theatre' within several cultural events and genres: in the arts, science, and literature
Reviews & endorsements
"[West] covers medieval and Renaissance demonstrations of the ars combinatorium and theatrical performances, and with taste as well as erudition...This is an important contribution to the history of ideas seen from a very rewarding perspective." Renaissance Quarterly
"A fascinating and suggestive book." Studies in English Literature
"West has written a learned book that draws freely on several scholarly fields and a panoply of primary sources...A certain semantic slippage is necessary to West's project and I, for one, am happy to grant him the privilege, for the liberties he takes in constructing his larger argument are more than compensated for by the quality of his local readings and his clear presentation of engaging historical materials." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England Ty Buckman
Product details
November 2006Paperback
9780521030618
312 pages
230 × 152 × 17 mm
0.488kg
22 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Note on texts
- Introduction: circles of learning
- 1. The space of the encyclopedia
- 2. The idea of a theatre
- 3. Tricks of vision, truths of discourse: illustration, ars combinatoria, and authority
- 4. Holding the mirror up to nature?: the humanist theatre beside itself
- 5. The show of learning and the performance of knowledge: humors, Epigrams, and 'an universal store'
- 6. Francis Bacon's theatre of Orpheus: 'literate experience' and experimental science
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.
