Issues of Death: Mortality and Identity in English Renaissance Tragedy - Softcover

Neill, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019818493X ISBN 13: 9780198184935

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999

Synopsis

Viewing Renaissance tragedy as an instrument for reimagining the human encounter with death, Neill examines major plays by Marlowe, Kyd, Shakespeare, Webster, Middleton, and Ford, exploring the relation of tragedy to the macabre tradition, to the apocalyptic displays of the anatomy theatre, and to the spectacular arts of funeral.

About this title

Review

wonderfully intelligent... among the handful of indispensable works on Renaissance drama (JOHN KERRIGAN, SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY)

The Renaissance "crisis" about death, which is at the centre of Neill's concern, is a quarry worthy of the spry, meticulous scholarship he brings to its pursuit (TERENCE HAWKINS, LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS)

one of the best books to appear this year... a wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating study of death in early modern England (JANETTE DILLON, SHAKESPEARE SURVEY)

compulsory reading for any scholar of the period with the faintest interest in death (MICHAEL DOBSON, ESSAYS IN CRITCISM)

an absorbing new study of English Renaissance tragedy (IAN DONALDSON, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT)

subtle, patient, and learned study of early modern English tragedy ... Neill's work is exemplary and important ... Issues of Death is the most consistently illuminating and rewarding book on English Renaissance tragedy written in the last twenty years ... the pleasure of learning from Neill's scholarship and critical sensitivity is reinforced by the attractiveness of the physical object in which those qualities are conveyed to us. Oxford University Press have designed the book beautifully, have printed it on excellent paper, and have included a generous number of illustrations. (David Womersley, Jesus College, Oxford, The Review of English Studies, Vol 50, no 199)

Neill's work is strong in its comprehensive learning, its clear structure, and his compelling style ... he gives the most complete consideration to death as a subject. His study is a pioneering synthesis of drama and the cultural history of death and mourning in the period. (Margaret J. Arnold, University of Kansas, Renaissance Quarterly)

The position may be familiar, but it is important, and Neill's version of it is richly illustrated ... The book forcefully revives the old thesis about the role of the plague, not just in the danse macabre motif but in the mortality crisis of this era as a whole ... a substantive and graceful piece of literary and cultural criticism, wise and learned, well argued and well written, generously and helpfully documented, perceptive about the dominant patterms of some major Renaissance dramatic texts, and informative about their social contexts. (Robert N. Watson, University of California, Los Angeles, MLR, vol 94, no 3, 1999)

Synopsis

Death, like most experiences that we think of as natural, is a product of the human imagination: all animals die, but only human beings suffer Death; and what they suffer is shaped by their own time and culture. Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part I explore Death as a trope of apocalypse - a moment of un-veiling or discovery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful openings enacted in the new theatres of anatomy. Separate chapters explore the apocalyptic design of two of the periods most powerful tragedies - Shakespeare's Othello, and Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. In Part 2, Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending. The imposition of an end is often figured as an act of writerly violence, committed by the author or his dramatic surrogate.

Extensive attention is paid to Hamlet as an extreme example of the structural consequences of such anxiety. The function of revenge tragedy as a response to the radical displacement of the dead by the Protestant abolition of purgatory -- one of the most painful aspects of the early modern re-imagining of death -- is also illustrated with particular clarity. Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funereal arts. It offers detailed analyses of three plays -- Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Ford's The Broken Heart. Here, funeral is rewritten as triumph, and death becomes the chosen instrument of an heroic self-fashioning designed to dress the arbitrary abruption of mortal ending in a powerful aesthetic of closure.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019818493X
• ISBN 13: 9780198184935
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424