Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England

Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England

Author: Adrian Streete

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-09-24

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0521760178

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This book provides a reassessment of the relationship between Reformed theology and early modern literature, with analysis of key writers and thinkers.


Book Synopsis Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England by : Adrian Streete

Download or read book Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England written by Adrian Streete and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-24 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a reassessment of the relationship between Reformed theology and early modern literature, with analysis of key writers and thinkers.


Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama

Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama

Author: Adrian Streete

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-17

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1108416144

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Streete studies the political uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic rhetoric in a wide range of seventeenth-century English drama, focusing on the plays of Marston, Middleton, Massinger, and Dryden. Drawing on recent work in religious and political history, he rethinks how religion is debated in the early modern theatre.


Book Synopsis Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama by : Adrian Streete

Download or read book Apocalypse and Anti-Catholicism in Seventeenth-Century English Drama written by Adrian Streete and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Streete studies the political uses of apocalyptic and anti-Catholic rhetoric in a wide range of seventeenth-century English drama, focusing on the plays of Marston, Middleton, Massinger, and Dryden. Drawing on recent work in religious and political history, he rethinks how religion is debated in the early modern theatre.


Religion and Drama in Early Modern England

Religion and Drama in Early Modern England

Author: Elizabeth Williamson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-08

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1317068106

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Offering fuller understandings of both dramatic representations and the complexities of religious culture, this collection reveals the ways in which religion and performance were inextricably linked in early modern England. Its readings extend beyond the interpretation of straightforward religious allusions and suggest new avenues for theorizing the dynamic relationship between religious representations and dramatic ones. By addressing the particular ways in which commercial drama adapted the sensory aspects of religious experience to its own symbolic systems, the volume enacts a methodological shift towards a more nuanced semiotics of theatrical performance. Covering plays by a wide range of dramatists, including Shakespeare, individual essays explore the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple valences of religious references in early modern plays. Additionally, Religion and Drama in Early Modern England reveals the theater's broad interpretation of post-Reformation Christian practice, as well as its engagement with the religions of Islam, Judaism and paganism.


Book Synopsis Religion and Drama in Early Modern England by : Elizabeth Williamson

Download or read book Religion and Drama in Early Modern England written by Elizabeth Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering fuller understandings of both dramatic representations and the complexities of religious culture, this collection reveals the ways in which religion and performance were inextricably linked in early modern England. Its readings extend beyond the interpretation of straightforward religious allusions and suggest new avenues for theorizing the dynamic relationship between religious representations and dramatic ones. By addressing the particular ways in which commercial drama adapted the sensory aspects of religious experience to its own symbolic systems, the volume enacts a methodological shift towards a more nuanced semiotics of theatrical performance. Covering plays by a wide range of dramatists, including Shakespeare, individual essays explore the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple valences of religious references in early modern plays. Additionally, Religion and Drama in Early Modern England reveals the theater's broad interpretation of post-Reformation Christian practice, as well as its engagement with the religions of Islam, Judaism and paganism.


The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama

The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama

Author: Elizabeth Williamson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1317024427

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The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama is the first book to present a detailed examination of early modern theatrical properties informed by the complexity of post-Reformation religious practice. Although English Protestant reformers set out to destroy all vestiges of Catholic idolatry, public theater companies frequently used stage properties to draw attention to the remnants of traditional religion as well as the persistent materiality of post-Reformation worship. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama explores the relationship between popular culture and theatrical performance by considering the social history and dramatic function of these properties, addressing their role as objects of devotion, idolatry, and remembrance on the professional stage. Rather than being aligned with identifiably Catholic or Protestant values, the author reveals how religious stage properties functioned as fulcrums around which more subtle debates about the status of Christian worship played out. Given the relative lack of existing documentation on stage properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama employs a wide range of source materials-including inventories published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes-to account for the material presence of these objects on the public stage. By combining historical research on popular religion with detailed readings of the scripts themselves, the book fills a gap in our knowledge about the physical qualities of the stage properties used in early modern productions. Tracing the theater's appropriation of highly charged religious properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama provides a new framework for understanding the canonization of early modern plays, especially those of Shakespeare.


Book Synopsis The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama by : Elizabeth Williamson

Download or read book The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama written by Elizabeth Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama is the first book to present a detailed examination of early modern theatrical properties informed by the complexity of post-Reformation religious practice. Although English Protestant reformers set out to destroy all vestiges of Catholic idolatry, public theater companies frequently used stage properties to draw attention to the remnants of traditional religion as well as the persistent materiality of post-Reformation worship. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama explores the relationship between popular culture and theatrical performance by considering the social history and dramatic function of these properties, addressing their role as objects of devotion, idolatry, and remembrance on the professional stage. Rather than being aligned with identifiably Catholic or Protestant values, the author reveals how religious stage properties functioned as fulcrums around which more subtle debates about the status of Christian worship played out. Given the relative lack of existing documentation on stage properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama employs a wide range of source materials-including inventories published in the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volumes-to account for the material presence of these objects on the public stage. By combining historical research on popular religion with detailed readings of the scripts themselves, the book fills a gap in our knowledge about the physical qualities of the stage properties used in early modern productions. Tracing the theater's appropriation of highly charged religious properties, The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama provides a new framework for understanding the canonization of early modern plays, especially those of Shakespeare.


Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage

Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage

Author: Huston Diehl

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-06-07

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1501734083

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Huston Diehl sees Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation—a reformed drama—and a producer of Protestant habits of thought—a reforming drama. According to Diehl, the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Drawing on the insights of symbolic anthropologists, Diehl explores the relationship between the suppression of late medieval religious cultures, with their rituals, symbols, plays, processions, and devotional practices, and the emergence of a popular theater under the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth and James. Questioning long-held assumptions that the reformed religion was inherently antitheatrical, she shows how the reformers invented new forms of theater, even as they condemned a Roman Catholic theatricality they associated with magic, sensuality, and duplicity. Using as her central texts the tragedies of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl maintains that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive. Employing a reformed rhetoric that is both powerful and profoundly disturbing, they disrupt their own stunning spectacles. Out of this creative tension between theatricality and antitheatricality emerges a distinctly Protestant aesthetic.


Book Synopsis Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage by : Huston Diehl

Download or read book Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage written by Huston Diehl and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Huston Diehl sees Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation—a reformed drama—and a producer of Protestant habits of thought—a reforming drama. According to Diehl, the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Drawing on the insights of symbolic anthropologists, Diehl explores the relationship between the suppression of late medieval religious cultures, with their rituals, symbols, plays, processions, and devotional practices, and the emergence of a popular theater under the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth and James. Questioning long-held assumptions that the reformed religion was inherently antitheatrical, she shows how the reformers invented new forms of theater, even as they condemned a Roman Catholic theatricality they associated with magic, sensuality, and duplicity. Using as her central texts the tragedies of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl maintains that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive. Employing a reformed rhetoric that is both powerful and profoundly disturbing, they disrupt their own stunning spectacles. Out of this creative tension between theatricality and antitheatricality emerges a distinctly Protestant aesthetic.


Early Modern Drama and the Bible

Early Modern Drama and the Bible

Author: A. Streete

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-10-27

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0230358667

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Early modern drama is steeped in biblical language, imagery and stories. This collection examines the pervasive presence of scripture on the early modern stage. Exploring plays by writers such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, and Webster, the contributors show how theatre offers a site of public and communal engagement with the Bible.


Book Synopsis Early Modern Drama and the Bible by : A. Streete

Download or read book Early Modern Drama and the Bible written by A. Streete and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern drama is steeped in biblical language, imagery and stories. This collection examines the pervasive presence of scripture on the early modern stage. Exploring plays by writers such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, and Webster, the contributors show how theatre offers a site of public and communal engagement with the Bible.


Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion

Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion

Author: David Loewenstein

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-01-22

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1316239810

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Written by an international team of literary scholars and historians, this collaborative volume illuminates the diversity of early modern religious beliefs and practices in Shakespeare's England, and considers how religious culture is imaginatively reanimated in Shakespeare's plays. Fourteen new essays explore the creative ways Shakespeare engaged with the multifaceted dimensions of Protestantism, Catholicism, non-Christian religions including Judaism and Islam, and secular perspectives, considering plays such as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. The collection is of great interest to readers of Shakespeare studies, early modern literature, religious studies, and early modern history.


Book Synopsis Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion by : David Loewenstein

Download or read book Shakespeare and Early Modern Religion written by David Loewenstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of literary scholars and historians, this collaborative volume illuminates the diversity of early modern religious beliefs and practices in Shakespeare's England, and considers how religious culture is imaginatively reanimated in Shakespeare's plays. Fourteen new essays explore the creative ways Shakespeare engaged with the multifaceted dimensions of Protestantism, Catholicism, non-Christian religions including Judaism and Islam, and secular perspectives, considering plays such as Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. The collection is of great interest to readers of Shakespeare studies, early modern literature, religious studies, and early modern history.


Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama

Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama

Author: Professor Lisa Hopkins

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-28

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1409489698

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Concerning itself with the complex interplay between iconoclasm against images of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England and stage representations that evoke various 'Marian moments' from the medieval, Catholic past, this collection answers the call for further investigation of the complex relationship between the fraught religio-political culture of the early modern period and the theater that it spawned. Joining historians in rejecting the received belief that Catholicism could be turned on and off like a water spigot in response to sixteenth-century religious reform, the early modern British theater scholars in this collection turn their attention to the vestiges of Catholic tradition and culture that leak out in stage imagery, plot devices, and characterization in ways that are not always clearly engaged in the business of Protestant panegyric or polemic. Among the questions they address are: What is the cultural function of dramatic Marian moments? Are Marian moments nostalgic for, or critical of, the 'Old Faith'? How do Marian moments negotiate the cultural trauma of iconoclasm and/or the Reformation in early modern England? Did these stage pictures of Mary provide subversive touchstones for the Old Faith of particular import to crypto-Catholic or recusant members of the audience?


Book Synopsis Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama by : Professor Lisa Hopkins

Download or read book Marian Moments in Early Modern British Drama written by Professor Lisa Hopkins and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concerning itself with the complex interplay between iconoclasm against images of the Virgin Mary in post-Reformation England and stage representations that evoke various 'Marian moments' from the medieval, Catholic past, this collection answers the call for further investigation of the complex relationship between the fraught religio-political culture of the early modern period and the theater that it spawned. Joining historians in rejecting the received belief that Catholicism could be turned on and off like a water spigot in response to sixteenth-century religious reform, the early modern British theater scholars in this collection turn their attention to the vestiges of Catholic tradition and culture that leak out in stage imagery, plot devices, and characterization in ways that are not always clearly engaged in the business of Protestant panegyric or polemic. Among the questions they address are: What is the cultural function of dramatic Marian moments? Are Marian moments nostalgic for, or critical of, the 'Old Faith'? How do Marian moments negotiate the cultural trauma of iconoclasm and/or the Reformation in early modern England? Did these stage pictures of Mary provide subversive touchstones for the Old Faith of particular import to crypto-Catholic or recusant members of the audience?


Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama

Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama

Author: Lieke Stelling

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-03

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1108477038

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A cross-religious exploration of conversion on the early modern English stage offering fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known plays.


Book Synopsis Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama by : Lieke Stelling

Download or read book Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama written by Lieke Stelling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cross-religious exploration of conversion on the early modern English stage offering fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known plays.


Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640

Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640

Author: John S. Pendergast

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780754651475

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Using as a primary focus the manner in which Protestant and Catholic paradigms of the Word affect the understanding of how meaning manifests itself in material language, this book develops a history of literacy between the middle of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth century. The author emphasizes how literacy is defined according to changing concepts of philological manifestation and embodiment, and how various social and political factors influence these concepts. The study looks at literary texts such as The Fairie Queene, early Shakespearean comedies, sermons and poems by John Donne, Latin textbooks and religious primers, and educational and religious treatises which illustrate how language could be used to perform spiritual functions. The cross section of texts serves to illustrate the pervasive applicability of the author's theories to early modern literature and culture, and their relationship to literature. the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature: Protestant reading and exegetical strategies in contrast with Catholic strategies, and secular versus spiritual literacies.


Book Synopsis Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640 by : John S. Pendergast

Download or read book Religion, Allegory, and Literacy in Early Modern England, 1560-1640 written by John S. Pendergast and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using as a primary focus the manner in which Protestant and Catholic paradigms of the Word affect the understanding of how meaning manifests itself in material language, this book develops a history of literacy between the middle of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth century. The author emphasizes how literacy is defined according to changing concepts of philological manifestation and embodiment, and how various social and political factors influence these concepts. The study looks at literary texts such as The Fairie Queene, early Shakespearean comedies, sermons and poems by John Donne, Latin textbooks and religious primers, and educational and religious treatises which illustrate how language could be used to perform spiritual functions. The cross section of texts serves to illustrate the pervasive applicability of the author's theories to early modern literature and culture, and their relationship to literature. the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature: Protestant reading and exegetical strategies in contrast with Catholic strategies, and secular versus spiritual literacies.