Putting History to the Question - Power, Politics, & Society in English Renaissance Drama

Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-231-11332-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 464 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 948 g

Putting History to the Question marks a critical step beyond the orthodoxy of New Historicism. This collection of mutually enriching essays, hitherto scattered through a variety of journals and critical collections, represents a generous range of Michael Neill's critical writings. Together they constitute a singularly eloquent exploration of the ways in which literary texts engage the world around them. Putting History to the Question is the result of Neill's ongoing investigation of how literature provides a revealing portrait of nation, social order, and empire, and how the flow of literary discourse affects the progress of history. Covering dramatic works by Shakespeare, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and others and reflecting upon subjects ranging from social attitudes toward racial difference and adultery to the politics of mercantilism and the hierarchy of relationships between masters and servants the book reenergizes discussion of Renaissance drama and history.

In exposing the complex and fluid interdependence of literature and history, Neill avoids two common pitfalls of literary criticism, neither elevating literature above the world in which it is produced and read nor casting literary texts as mere barometers of political currents. For the many scholars and students accustomed to reading from tattered photocopies of Neill's seminal writings, Putting History to the Question will be a valuable addition to the critical library.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Neill, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The Stage and Social Order1. Servant Obedience and Master Sins: Shakespeare and the Bonds of Service2. "This Gentle Gentleman'': Social Change and the Language of Status in Arden of Faversham3. Massinger's Patriarchy: The Social Vision of A New Way to Pay Old Debts4. "The Tongues of Angels'': Charity and the Social Order in The City Madam5. "In Everything Illegitimate'': Imagining the Bastard in English Renaissance Drama6. Bastardy, Counterfeiting, and Misogyny in The Revenger's Tragedy7. "Amphitheaters in the Body'': Playing with Hands on the Shakespearean Stage2. Race, Nation, Empire8. Changing Places in Othello9. "Unproper Beds'': Race, Adultery and the Hideous in Othello10. "Mulattos,'' "Blacks,'' and "Indian Moors'': Othello and Early Modern Constructions of Human Difference11. Putting History to the Question: An Episode of Torture at Bantam in Java, 160412. "Material Flames'': Romance, Empire, and Mercantile Fantasy in John Fletcher's Island Princess13. Broken English and Broken Irish: Nation, Language, and the Optic of Power in Shakespeare's Histories14. "The Exact Map or Discovery of Human Affairs'': Shakespeare and the Plotting of History15. The World Beyond: Shakespeare and the Tropes of Translation

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Neill is professor of English at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He is the author of Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy and editor of the Oxford Shakespeare edition of Antony and Cleopatra.