Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature

Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature

Author: Joseph Sterrett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-25

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1108429726

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Examines the performative aspects of prayer and how they were represented in literature in early modern England.


Book Synopsis Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature by : Joseph Sterrett

Download or read book Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature written by Joseph Sterrett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the performative aspects of prayer and how they were represented in literature in early modern England.


Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature

Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature

Author: Joseph Sterrett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-25

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1108698530

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Early modern England was a nation alive with intense religious debate, with often violent results. Central to these debates were questions of prayer, questions powerful enough to splinter the English church and to fuel a ferocious civil war. This collection of thirteen newly commissioned essays traces the controversy and value given to the performance of prayer, through the body, the spoken word and written text, as well as its representation on stage. Through close readings of the works of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton and Henry Vaughan amongst others, this book examines the performative aspects of prayer in a range of literary modes. This broad range of study is expanded further with chapters focussing on the private religious diaries of men and women throughout the seventeenth century, and the convergence of music and prayer in the work of William Byrd.


Book Synopsis Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature by : Joseph Sterrett

Download or read book Prayer and Performance in Early Modern English Literature written by Joseph Sterrett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern England was a nation alive with intense religious debate, with often violent results. Central to these debates were questions of prayer, questions powerful enough to splinter the English church and to fuel a ferocious civil war. This collection of thirteen newly commissioned essays traces the controversy and value given to the performance of prayer, through the body, the spoken word and written text, as well as its representation on stage. Through close readings of the works of Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton and Henry Vaughan amongst others, this book examines the performative aspects of prayer in a range of literary modes. This broad range of study is expanded further with chapters focussing on the private religious diaries of men and women throughout the seventeenth century, and the convergence of music and prayer in the work of William Byrd.


St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture

St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Author: Roze Hentschell

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0198848811

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Prior to the 1666 fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral was an important central site for religious, commercial, and social life in London. The literature of the period - both fictional and historical - reveals a great interest in the space, and show it to be complex and contested, with multiple functions and uses beyond its status as a church. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices animates the cathedral space by focusing on the every day functions of the building, deepening and sometimes complicating previous works on St Paul's. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture is a study of London's cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially, and argues that specific locations should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic and ever-evolving state. The varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, are examined, including the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers, and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations.


Book Synopsis St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture by : Roze Hentschell

Download or read book St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture written by Roze Hentschell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the 1666 fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral was an important central site for religious, commercial, and social life in London. The literature of the period - both fictional and historical - reveals a great interest in the space, and show it to be complex and contested, with multiple functions and uses beyond its status as a church. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Spatial Practices animates the cathedral space by focusing on the every day functions of the building, deepening and sometimes complicating previous works on St Paul's. St Paul's Cathedral Precinct in Early Modern Literature and Culture is a study of London's cathedral, its immediate surroundings, and its everyday users in early modern literary and historical documents and images, with special emphasis on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It discusses representations of several of the seemingly discrete spaces of the precinct to reveal how these spaces overlap with and inform one another spatially, and argues that specific locations should be seen as mutually constitutive and in a dynamic and ever-evolving state. The varied uses of the precinct, including the embodied spatial practices of early modern Londoners and visitors, are examined, including the walkers in the nave, sermon-goers, those who shopped for books, the residents of the precinct, the choristers, and those who were devoted to church repairs and renovations.


Venus’s Palace

Venus’s Palace

Author: Reut Barzilai

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-20

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 100084952X

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This book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators. In so doing, the book makes a substantial contribution both to the study of representations of theatre in Shakespeare’s plays and to the understanding of ethical concerns about acting and spectating—then, and now. The book opens with a comprehensive and coherent analysis of the main early modern English anxieties about theater and its power. These are read against twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of acting, interviews with actors, and research into the effects of media representation on spectator behaviour, all of which demonstrate the lingering relevance of antitheatrical claims and the personal and philosophical implications of acting and spectating. The main part of the book reveals Shakespeare’s responses to major antitheatrical claims about the powerful effects of poetry, music, playacting, and playgoing. It also demonstrates the evolution of Shakespeare’s view of these claims over the course of his career: from light-hearted parody in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, through systematic contemplation in Hamlet, to acceptance and dramatization in The Tempest. This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theater, English literature, history, and culture.


Book Synopsis Venus’s Palace by : Reut Barzilai

Download or read book Venus’s Palace written by Reut Barzilai and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators. In so doing, the book makes a substantial contribution both to the study of representations of theatre in Shakespeare’s plays and to the understanding of ethical concerns about acting and spectating—then, and now. The book opens with a comprehensive and coherent analysis of the main early modern English anxieties about theater and its power. These are read against twentieth- and twenty-first-century theories of acting, interviews with actors, and research into the effects of media representation on spectator behaviour, all of which demonstrate the lingering relevance of antitheatrical claims and the personal and philosophical implications of acting and spectating. The main part of the book reveals Shakespeare’s responses to major antitheatrical claims about the powerful effects of poetry, music, playacting, and playgoing. It also demonstrates the evolution of Shakespeare’s view of these claims over the course of his career: from light-hearted parody in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, through systematic contemplation in Hamlet, to acceptance and dramatization in The Tempest. This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theater, English literature, history, and culture.


Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert

Author: Francesca Cioni

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-01-11

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0198874405

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This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.


Book Synopsis Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert by : Francesca Cioni

Download or read book Materiality and Devotion in the Poetry of George Herbert written by Francesca Cioni and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses textual and material evidence -- in poetry, prayers, physiologies, sermons, church buildings and monuments, manuscript diaries and notebooks -- to explore how material things held spiritual meaning in George Herbert's poetry, and to reflect on scholarly approaches to matter and form in devotional poetry.


The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature

The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature

Author: Sophie Chiari

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1317038177

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With its many rites of initiation (religious, educational, professional or sexual), Elizabethan and Jacobean education emphasized both imitation and discovery in a struggle to bring population to a minimal literacy, while more demanding techniques were being developed for the cultural elite. The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature examines the question of transmission and of the educational procedures in16th- and 17th-century England by emphasizing deviant practices that questioned, reassessed or even challenged pre-established cultural norms and traditions. This volume thus alternates theoretical analyses with more specific readings in order to investigate the multiple ways in which ideas then circulated. It also addresses the ways in which the dominant cultural forms of the literature and drama of Shakespeare’s age were being subverted. In this regard, its various contributors analyze how the interrelated processes of initiation, transmission and transgression operated at the core of early modern English culture, and how Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, or lesser known poets and playwrights such as Thomas Howell, Thomas Edwards and George Villiers, managed to appropriate these cultural processes in their works.


Book Synopsis The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature by : Sophie Chiari

Download or read book The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature written by Sophie Chiari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its many rites of initiation (religious, educational, professional or sexual), Elizabethan and Jacobean education emphasized both imitation and discovery in a struggle to bring population to a minimal literacy, while more demanding techniques were being developed for the cultural elite. The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature examines the question of transmission and of the educational procedures in16th- and 17th-century England by emphasizing deviant practices that questioned, reassessed or even challenged pre-established cultural norms and traditions. This volume thus alternates theoretical analyses with more specific readings in order to investigate the multiple ways in which ideas then circulated. It also addresses the ways in which the dominant cultural forms of the literature and drama of Shakespeare’s age were being subverted. In this regard, its various contributors analyze how the interrelated processes of initiation, transmission and transgression operated at the core of early modern English culture, and how Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, or lesser known poets and playwrights such as Thomas Howell, Thomas Edwards and George Villiers, managed to appropriate these cultural processes in their works.


Early Modern Prayer

Early Modern Prayer

Author: William Gibson

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2017-11-07

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1786832267

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The essays in this book aim to answer the following questions: What was the place of prayer in the early modern world? What did it look and sound like? Of what aesthetic and political structures did it partake, and how did prayer affect art, literature and politics? How did the activities, expressions and texts we might group under the term prayer serve to bind disparate peoples together, or, in turn, to create friction and fissures within communities? What roles did prayer play in intercultural contact, including violence, conquest and resistance? How can we use the prayers of those centuries (roughly 1500–1800) imprecisely termed the ‘early modern’ era to understand the peoples, polities and cultures of that time?


Book Synopsis Early Modern Prayer by : William Gibson

Download or read book Early Modern Prayer written by William Gibson and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this book aim to answer the following questions: What was the place of prayer in the early modern world? What did it look and sound like? Of what aesthetic and political structures did it partake, and how did prayer affect art, literature and politics? How did the activities, expressions and texts we might group under the term prayer serve to bind disparate peoples together, or, in turn, to create friction and fissures within communities? What roles did prayer play in intercultural contact, including violence, conquest and resistance? How can we use the prayers of those centuries (roughly 1500–1800) imprecisely termed the ‘early modern’ era to understand the peoples, polities and cultures of that time?


The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature

The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature

Author: David M. Posner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-11-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1139426680

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This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Ranging widely from Castiglione and French courtesy manuals, through Montaigne and Bacon, to the literature of the Grand Siècle, David Posner examines the structures of public identity in the period. He focuses on the developing tensions between, on the one hand, literary or imaginative representations of 'nobility' and, on the other, the increasingly problematic historical position of the nobility themselves. These tensions produce a transformation in the notion of the noble self as a performance, and eventually doom court society and its theatrical mode of self-presentation. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical and historical theories of interpretation, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the role of literature both in analysing and in shaping social identity.


Book Synopsis The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature by : David M. Posner

Download or read book The Performance of Nobility in Early Modern European Literature written by David M. Posner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-11-04 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This valuable study illuminates the idea of nobility as display, as public performance, in Renaissance and seventeenth-century literature and society. Ranging widely from Castiglione and French courtesy manuals, through Montaigne and Bacon, to the literature of the Grand Siècle, David Posner examines the structures of public identity in the period. He focuses on the developing tensions between, on the one hand, literary or imaginative representations of 'nobility' and, on the other, the increasingly problematic historical position of the nobility themselves. These tensions produce a transformation in the notion of the noble self as a performance, and eventually doom court society and its theatrical mode of self-presentation. Situated at the intersection of rhetorical and historical theories of interpretation, this book contributes significantly to our understanding of the role of literature both in analysing and in shaping social identity.


Shakespeare's Common Prayers

Shakespeare's Common Prayers

Author: Daniel Swift

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-10-05

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0199977038

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Societies and entire nations draw their identities from certain founding documents, whether charters, declarations, or manifestos. The Book of Common Prayer figures as one of the most crucial in the history of the English-speaking peoples. First published in 1549 to make accessible the devotional language of the late Henry the VIII's new church, the prayer book was a work of monumental religious, political, and cultural importance. Within its rituals, prescriptions, proscriptions, and expressions were fought the religious wars of the age of Shakespeare. This diminutive book--continuously reformed and revised--was how that age defined itself. In Shakespeare's Common Prayers, Daniel Swift makes dazzling and original use of this foundational text, employing it as an entry-point into the works of England's most celebrated writer. Though commonly neglected as a source for Shakespeare's work, Swift persuasively and conclusively argues that the Book of Common Prayer was absolutely essential to the playwright. It was in the Book's ambiguities and its fierce contestations that Shakespeare found the ready elements of drama: dispute over words and their practical consequences, hope for sanctification tempered by fear of simple meaninglessness, and the demand for improvised performance as compensation for the failure of language to fulfill its promises. What emerges is nothing less than a portrait of Shakespeare at work: absorbing, manipulating, reforming, and struggling with the explosive chemistry of word and action that comprised early modern liturgy. Swift argues that the Book of Common Prayer mediates between the secular and the devotional, producing a tension that makes Shakespeare's plays so powerful and exceptional. Tracing the prayer book's lines and motions through As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, and particularly Macbeth, Swift reveals how the greatest writer of the age--of perhaps any age--was influenced and guided by its most important book.


Book Synopsis Shakespeare's Common Prayers by : Daniel Swift

Download or read book Shakespeare's Common Prayers written by Daniel Swift and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Societies and entire nations draw their identities from certain founding documents, whether charters, declarations, or manifestos. The Book of Common Prayer figures as one of the most crucial in the history of the English-speaking peoples. First published in 1549 to make accessible the devotional language of the late Henry the VIII's new church, the prayer book was a work of monumental religious, political, and cultural importance. Within its rituals, prescriptions, proscriptions, and expressions were fought the religious wars of the age of Shakespeare. This diminutive book--continuously reformed and revised--was how that age defined itself. In Shakespeare's Common Prayers, Daniel Swift makes dazzling and original use of this foundational text, employing it as an entry-point into the works of England's most celebrated writer. Though commonly neglected as a source for Shakespeare's work, Swift persuasively and conclusively argues that the Book of Common Prayer was absolutely essential to the playwright. It was in the Book's ambiguities and its fierce contestations that Shakespeare found the ready elements of drama: dispute over words and their practical consequences, hope for sanctification tempered by fear of simple meaninglessness, and the demand for improvised performance as compensation for the failure of language to fulfill its promises. What emerges is nothing less than a portrait of Shakespeare at work: absorbing, manipulating, reforming, and struggling with the explosive chemistry of word and action that comprised early modern liturgy. Swift argues that the Book of Common Prayer mediates between the secular and the devotional, producing a tension that makes Shakespeare's plays so powerful and exceptional. Tracing the prayer book's lines and motions through As You Like It, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Othello, and particularly Macbeth, Swift reveals how the greatest writer of the age--of perhaps any age--was influenced and guided by its most important book.


Confession and Memory in Early Modern English Literature

Confession and Memory in Early Modern English Literature

Author: Paul D. Stegner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-01-26

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 113755861X

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This is the first study to consider the relationship between private confessional rituals and memory across a range of early modern writers, including Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Robert Southwell.


Book Synopsis Confession and Memory in Early Modern English Literature by : Paul D. Stegner

Download or read book Confession and Memory in Early Modern English Literature written by Paul D. Stegner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first study to consider the relationship between private confessional rituals and memory across a range of early modern writers, including Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Robert Southwell.