Horrid Spectacle: Violation in the Theater of Early Modern England (Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies) - Hardcover

Burks, Deborah G.

9780820703411: Horrid Spectacle: Violation in the Theater of Early Modern England (Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820703419 ISBN 13: 9780820703411

Publisher: Duquesne University Press, 2004

Literate and political early modern England was a socially diverse nation to which London's theaters contributed politically inflected art and entertainment; torture, murder, and infidelity were graphically depicted on the stage. This study of violation explores the connections between these theatrical representations and the use of violation imagery in a range of public and private discourses, from Protestant polemic, parliamentary legislation, and political pamphlets, to aristocratic letters, royalist fiction, and "regicidal" histories.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Synopsis:

Literate -- and political -- early modern England was a socially diverse nation to which London's theatres contributed politically inflected art and entertainment; torture, murder and infidelity were graphically depicted on the stage. This study of violation -- one of the most potent, ubiquitous, and durable tropes of the English reformation -- explores the connections between these theatrical representations and the use of violation imagery in a range of public and private discourses, from Protestant polemic, parliamentary legislation and political pamphlets, to aristocratic letters, royalist fiction and 'regicidal' histories. Burks considers private and political writing alongside literary texts; the disparate motives, modes of address and methods of transmission of each type of writing thus serve as foils for one another. Burks also places women writers in the company of their male peerswithout segregating or prioritising either gender group.

The book is unusual for being a study of Restoration drama that understands the period from 1660 to 1684 not as a starting moment (of the 'long' 18th century), but as a reasonable ending point in a consideration of the English Reformation's literary and political afterlives.

About the Author:

DEBORAH G. BURKS is associate professor of English at Ohio State University at Lima.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.