Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe

In this 2003 book West explores what 'theatre' meant to medieval and Renaissance writers and places Renaissance drama within the influential context of the encyclopedic writings produced at the time. It was an encyclopedic culture, obsessed with sorting knowledge, and early encyclopedias presented themselves as textual theatres, in which everything knowable could be represented in concrete, visible form. Medieval and Renaissance plays, similarly, took encyclopedic themes as their topics: the mysteries of nature, universal history, the world of learning. But instead of transmitting authorized knowledge unambiguously, as it was supposed to be, the theatre created a situation in which ordinary experience could become a source of authority. West covers a wide range of works, from the encyclopedic texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to Marlowe's Dr Faustus, Jonson's The Alchemist, and Bacon's Novum Organum, to provide a fascinating picture of the cultural life of the period.

• 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