Renaissance Tragedy Research Articles

Shakespeare and the Domestic: Geraldo U. de Sousa’s At Home in Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Frederic B. Tromly’s Fathers and Sons in Shakespeare: The Debt Never Promised

and the domestic is a dauntingly capacious rubric for a short review essay, and Geraldo U. de Sousa's At Home in Tragedies and Frederic B. Tromly's Fathers and Sons in Shakespeare: Debt Never Promised have little in common other than a place within that category. De Sousa's book takes as its topic the material space of the home and, more specifically, the dramatic function of dwelling places in the tragedies (3), arguing that Shakespeare represents domestic space as a web of tragic (9). Tromly, on the other hand, focuses more narrowly on common patterns in the relationships between fathers and sons in plays, without singling out a specific genre (although, notably, there are no comedies included in his study). Both of these monographs have been preceded by several decades of historicist and feminist literary scholarship crossing what were once traditional disciplinary boundaries between literary studies, history, sociology, and anthropology creatively explore literary texts as sites of knowledge on the politics and bonds of marriage, family, and the household. Both make contributions this interdisciplinary pursuit, although neither breaks new ground. Of studies that fall under the rubric of and the Domestic, articles and books on marital bonds, customs, and hierarchies are by far the most numerous, too numerous review here in full. Among the most significant studies of marriage from the past thirty years that deserve mention, however, are Linda Fitz's 1980 'What Says the Married Woman': Marriage Theory and Feminism in the English Renaissance; Carol Neely's 1989 Broken Nuptials in Plays; Mary Beth Rose's 1988 Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama and her more recent The Heroics of Marriage in Renaissance Tragedy (1998); B. J. Sokol and Mary Sokol's 2003 Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage; and Loreen L. Giese's recent contribution, Courtship, Marriage Customs, and (2006). Laurie Shannon's Nature's Bias: Renaissance Homonormativity and Elizabethan Comic Likeness (2000) also needs be mentioned, as it offers a crucial corrective the heterocentric view most modern critics have taken affective bonds, marriage, and the cultural work of Shakespearean comedy, the genre most often associated with the triangulated nexus of sexual love, romance, and family. Other important queerings of include Mario DiGangi's Queering the Shakespearean (1996); Julie Crawford's The Homoerotics of Elizabethan Comedies (2006); and Valerie Traub's work, such as The Homoerotics of Shakespearean Comedy (1992), The (In) Significance of 'Lesbian' Desire in Early Modern (1992), and Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992). As DiGangi points out, however, Shakespeare's contemporaries often present a fuller picture [than Shakespeare] of the early modern household and the same sex relations enabled by its particular functioning and composition (270). Catherine Belsey's 1999 and the Loss of Eden: Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture is a curious example as a monograph with overt political intentions to historicize and thus denaturalize family values (xiv) but which nevertheless maintains heteronormative assumptions and elides any discussion of homoerotic and homosocial ties in the early modern household. It also focuses solely on the nuclear family of husband, wife, parents, and siblings, although an important distinction between the early modern family and the modern family was the presence in the early modern family of non-kin inmates, sojourners, boarders or lodgers ... as well as indentured apprentices and resident servants (Stone 26-27). In the introduction her edited collection, Domestic Arrangements in Early Modern England (2002) (which includes two essays on plays by Shakespeare), Kari Boyd McBride gives attention the extended nature of the early modern family, particularly female servants. …

Female sexuality in Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy

Revenge tragedy, a subdivision of Renaissance tragedy of blood, expresses a dominantly male perspective. In Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy, not only Hamlet but Vindice, as the chief moral spokesman in each play, tells us more about his own needs to set right a world out of joint and epitomizes the aesthetic revenger. The fundamental motive for the tragic action in both plays is revenge according to the masculine code of male domination, yet the revenge motif would be yielded to a psychological development and a detailed study of female sexuality. Shakespeare and Tourneur make explicit the preoccupation with the uncontrollability of female sexuality in their works, for female erotic mobility threatens the power base of patriarchy. The table of incest, adultery, suspicion, hate, and violence explores the boundaries of human corruption in which desire and vengeance have become complicatedly entangled. Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy effectively demonstrate that women cannot function properly outside of the patriarchal structure, and reinforce the patriarchal notion that women cannot survive without men to govern them. Though each woman is presented as a sexual subject in both plays, questions of chastity, references to chastity, adultery, cuckoldry, incest, and misogyny are submerged in the overpowering issue on her life itself. In both plays each woman is the emotional focus in the play’s cultural construction of the guilt, so that she seems determined to take guilt upon herself. The women who cause the male characters’ anguish or break the rules of female conduct are verbally assaulted by men, or destroyed by the masculine code of the punishment of women. Despite a moral difference between Hamlet and The Revenger’s Tragedy the woman’s suffering or death is as much an outcome of the tragic hero’s strategy of the actual vengeance, for his frustration or frenzy in the action of revenge is reflected in an attack on female sexuality as a kind of a defense against his vulnerability, specifically against the femininity.

Protestantism and drama in early modern England

Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England, Adrian Streete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. x + 298. Hardback $95.00. For long time now one line of thinking about modern has wanted trace its origins the Reformation; for about as long, another has found in English Renaissance tragedy, Hamlet above all, special venue for this new personage. Adrian Streete places his intricate and ambitious book in both traditions, with few modifications. First, he wants resist what he sees as the current trend toward plural, revisionist agenda, which stresses the conceptual indeterminacy (7) of any religious denomination the point that and Catholic no longer have any irreducible essence but appear instead as contingent, hybrid categories. In that case, Streete worries, critics have done little more than assert the fact of hybridity before moving on, whereas he wants contemplate seriously what identity means, notwithstanding the risk of essentialism. Second, he acknowledges the work of several medievalists, in particular the criticism of David Aers's A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists (13 n. 47), and so allows, at least in principle, for complex medieval that preceded modernity. By the same token, he tries avoid story of transition that would position the Reformation in a narrative of subjective emancipation toward incipient rationality (29). Streete has done large amount of reading in the primary and secondary literature, skillfully orients his reader in ongoing debates (e.g., over Calvinism, 98-101), and selects rich array of quotations from which construct his arguments. Whether one agrees with those arguments or not it is easy learn great deal from his tactics. He has an uncommon gift for taking theology on its own terms, no matter how arcane or fanciful. That gift is matched welcome appreciation for continental philosophy: Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Adorno, Althusser, Foucault, Levinas, and z!izek all make appearances, the latter in particular having left deep mark. The book falls into two parts - one dealing primarily with theology, the second with theater (mainly Doctor Faustus, Richard II, and The Revenger's Tragedy via Hamlet), though doses of early modern religious lyric appear throughout elucidate different points. Streete keeps several threads going through all these chapters, far the most important his contention that the question of interiority or subjectivity entails debate about mimesis. It is tremendous strength of the book have shown in the depths of the most abstract theology how Protestants' rejection of images made them all the more subject the lure of simulacra. Lacking direct access their archetypal, divine model, they finally must acknowledge, Streete claims, precarious and fundamentally surrogate status of the figurai (218). As with any book in multiple parts, uniting them poses special challenge. More often than not, Streete expects his theological prelude explain the because the Reformation changes everything first and the then illustrates: so for example theology describes a tension between the ideal divine subject and its secular mimetic copy that provides one of the main sources of tragedy in the period (26). The patterns of subject formation that Streete finds in theology are repeated by (79) or deeply felt in the drama (123), even where the manages to make critical use of the theological model that it borrows (79), as in Marlowe's audacious parody (160; also 145, 158). Only rarely does Streete entertain the possibility that the influence can work the other way round: namely, that Protestant theological writers might have borrowed trick or two from the theater, that arena of studied polyvocality (116) - in which case I wondered if pluralist revisionism might not have point. At any rate some people will be disappointed see taking so passive position with respect theology, when (in my view at least) theatre has helped shape Christianity from the crown of thorns forward. …

Performing Anachronism: A New Aetiology of Italian Renaissance Tragedy

Performing Anachronism: A New Aetiology of Italian Renaissance Tragedy

Regressive Progression: The Quest for Self-Transcendence in Western Tragedy

Regressive progression is a concept which interestingly describes the developmental process of Western tragedy based on the recurring motif of the quest for the higher self and Nietzsche’s understanding of Dionysian tragic hero. This motif reveals itself in three manifestations - action, imagination and inaction- respectively visible in the three major dramatic eras of the Renaissance tragedy, European nineteenth-century drama, and the Absurd Theatre. Although the approach of the quest regressively shifts from action to inaction, the degree of success of the tragic questers in approximating the wished-for higher self reveals a progressive line in the developmental process of Western tragedy.

Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment Catherine A. Schuler Feminism redux—or, if Sarah Palin is the answer, what was the question? While preparing this issue of Theatre Journal over the last several months, my eye has often fallen on advertisements for theatre, film, and television in the New York Times and the Washington Post. This morning as I pulled apart the Sunday Times, I was particularly struck by an advertisement for CbS’s “Premiere Monday”: six panels featured eight male and two female actors; the male figures were prominently displayed, while the women receded into the background. In the Post, of thirteen panels advertising the new fall season, only three featured women—and Laura Mulvey might be moved to theorize their representation and reception. I then turned to the Times’s “Theatre Directory” to peruse offerings on, off, and off-off broadway. out of sixty-four entries, my quick scan revealed two female playwrights: Saviana Stanescu, whose Aliens with Extraordinary Skills was enjoying a limited run at the Women’s Project, and Leslie Lee, author of The First Breeze of Summer, which is currently in revival at Signature Theatre. Turning to the Post, I found one play by a woman, Karen Zacarias’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, at Roundhouse Theatre. Although the film section in the Times was somewhat less grim than the one in the Post, flipping through both revealed a host of fathers and sons, men with guns, and men competing with other men for women. Judging by the advertisements, the ratio of leading men to leading women in most films is still about four-to-one—not much improvement on the typical English renaissance tragedy. Is it just the marketing, or have our representational practices really changed so little since the emergence of modern feminism in the united States during the 1960s? I never thought that I would long for a Wendy Wasserstein/Marsha Norman/beth Henley retrospective on broadway, but I am on the verge. It seems to me that women in the academy have fared somewhat better than women in commercial professional theatre. In the late 1980s, more than one senior woman warned me not to risk my career on feminist scholarship, because it was a red flag for both search and APT committees. If I were lucky enough to be hired, they insisted, I would surely not achieve tenure or promotion. Although some disciplines are more resistant to feminist and gender scholarship than others, in theatre and performance studies, some of those barriers have fallen. The proliferation of conference presentations, journal articles, and booklength studies on women in theatre, alternative sexualities, gender and performance, and performing gender suggests that in certain respects we have come a long way since the 1980s. At least a third of the articles I read for Theatre Journal have a gender component, and although, like Jill Dolan, I am sometimes troubled by the diminished presence of women in the broader study of gender, I am gratified to know that the roots of gender studies are in feminist studies. Nonetheless, the academy can still be a chilly environment for women. In my own university, women are still locked out of top administrative positions; except in women’s studies and English, the number of female full professors is small; pay inequities persist; and legal dodges pass for fairness. Although, in the interests of “equity,” our season generally includes one female-authored play, the season selection committee is often stumped after its members run through the usual suspects: Caryl Churchill, Wendy Wasserstein, and Marsha Norman. (beth Henley has long since been forgotten.) bardolatry endures, and it is still the job of women on the faculty to know the literature by women. In my youth, a prematurely optimistic Virginia Slims ad asserted, “You’ve Come a Long Way baby”—but what was the destination, and are we there yet? Perhaps the articles in this issue of Theatre Journal can help us to pinpoint our current position. The two articles that bookend this issue of Theatre Journal are at once retrospective and introspective, and the authors of both care deeply about the state of feminist critique in U.S. theatre and society. In the...

Ran: Chaos on the Western Frontier

This article looks at the relationship between Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Shakespeare's King Lear and genre cinema. Instead of seeking to prove Ran's debt to Shakespeare, debate centres on Kurosawa's inventive intertextualization, part of which involves his manipulation of the generic codes of Eastern and Western cinema. The article argues that although widely regarded as part of the canon of Shakespeare on screen and appropriated by a Shakespearean heritage of global proportions Kurosawa's Ran refuses to be consumed by Western academia. The film offers a social critique of patriarchal systems across a range of genres, from Japanese jidai-geki epic to Renaissance tragedy, to Hollywood western, linking the concerns embedded in Shakespeare's King Lear with those of other historical eras, other nations, other mythologies.

'Eufimia': An Italian Renaissance Tragedy by G. B. Giraldi , Philip Horne (review)

MLRy 100.2, 2005 521 output. Milburn's analysis is thorough and convincing: via a study of the distribution ofnon-Petrarchan lexical items through his corpus, she is able to draw original conclu? sions about the relationship between lexis, genre, and imitation in Tansillo's poetry. Milburn concludes her book with a chapter dedicated to one of the key elements of Tansillo's thematics, the topos of jealousy. She traces the process by which this theme?hitherto considered to be inappropriate forserious verse because of its generic associations with a low comic register?comes to prominence in the Southern lyric. As jealousy becomes an increasingly important motif in ltalian literature, a coherent iconography for its representation is demanded, and this chapter follows its develop? ment through Boccaccio, Lorenzo de' Medici, and Sannazaro, to Tansillo himself. Tansillo's formulation is then shown to have been adopted as the imitative model for subsequent treatments of the topos in the Cinque and Seicento. The book also contains useful appendices of primary sources, comprising Alcune stanze del pianto di San Pietro'; three letters from Tansillo to Benedetto Varchi; and a bibliography of jealousy texts, in which are transcribed all texts discussed not available in modern editions. A particularly helpful inclusion is the detailed index. All in all, this book is an exemplary study, and a major contribution to the literature on Tansillo and the sixteenth-century Neapolitan Petrarchists. University of Edinburgh Guyda Armstrong 'Eufimia': An Italian Renaissance Tragedy. By G. B. Giraldi. Ed., with introduction, notes, and glossary, by Philip Horne. (Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 21) Lewiston: Mellen. 2003. ?69.95. xiv + 25opp. ISBN 0-7734-6833-1. The writings of Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio (1504-73) have in recent decades in? creasingly attracted attention for their range and innovative approach, qualities evi? dent also in his theatrical production. Though predominantly famous for his first Senecan tragedy (Orbecche, 1541), Giraldi is also recognized for his pioneering experiments with various 'mixed' genres, and especially the tragedia di lietofine. Eufimia is one of six tragedies of this kind. Hitherto only available in a posthumous publica? tion of 1583, the play now appears for the firsttime in a modern critical edition, the fifthof Giraldi's plays to be edited by Philip Horne for the Edwin Mellen press. As in Horne's previous editions, the Italian text is presented clearly and accurately, with only discrete and scrupulously indicated interventions. The editor's considerable ex? perience in the field clearly informs the detailed notes, which, as well as explaining literary allusions and complex linguistic features (supplemented by a glossary of archaic words), guide the reader through the plot structure, contextual factors, and, where relevant, performance-related issues. The edition begins with three introductory chapters (after the useful foreword by John Woodhouse), which function almost as discrete essays. Largely expanding on ideas raised in previous studies, these examine key features ofEufimia in relation to the intellectual and social context of mid-sixteenth-century Ferrara, and particularly the Estense court forwhich Eufimia was composed. The firstchapter connects the play's heavy-handed representation of the vice of ingratitude to a notorious quarrel (c. 1554) involving Giraldi and a formerstudent ofhis (G. B. Pigna), in which both men accused each other of plagiarizing their ideas on chivalric romances. (It might be added that literary disputes were commonplace throughout the century, and that Giraldi was in? volved in others as well.) Discussion ofthe complex circumstances ofthis dispute leads to furtherhypotheses for dating the play's possible composition and performance. Developing the theme of romances, the second chapter explores the implications of introducing a notable chivalric element into Eufimia, taking into account the impact of 522 Reviews Ariosto's Orlando furioso in Ferrara and theatrical tastes at the court from 1559. This section also makes valuable observations about Giraldi's moral and didactic attitude towards literature generally, which resisted the prevailing view that its purpose was purely 'recreational'. Here, as elsewhere, it would have been helpful to have provided more background information on the contemporary ltalian literary scene (especially on the growing interest in Aristotelian criticism) for the less specialized reader. Like other plays by Giraldi, the plot of Eufimia?the tale of a villainous...

The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy, and: The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama, and: The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (review)

Reviewed by: The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy and: The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama and: The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England Elizabeth Klett The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy. By Lisa Hopkins. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; pp. 229. $62.00 cloth. The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. Edited by Naomi Conn Liebler. New York: Palgrave, 2002; pp. 242. $59.95 cloth. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. By Valerie Traub. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; pp. 492. $80.00 cloth, $29.00 paper. Recent feminist scholarship on English Renaissance drama has dealt with a number of vexing questions about how women are represented in early modern textual and visual culture. Are the portrayals of women—as tragic characters, as sexual subjects—misogynist or celebratory? Are these portrayals circumscribed by dominant discourses, or do they transform such discourses? Three new books by leading feminist critics attempt to answer these questions through the lenses of two quite different issues. Lisa Hopkins and the authors in Naomi Conn Liebler's edited collection address the problematic construction of female heroism in tragic dramas, while Valerie Traub presents an in-depth study of lesbian representations in a variety of dramatic and nondramatic early modern texts. Each scholar seeks to counter the idea that Renaissance portrayals of women were reductive, trapped within the stereotypes of silence, passivity, and victimization. Rather, they argue as a group for recognition of the cultural power presented by women, both real and fictional, in the period. Their arguments are carefully balanced, however, with an awareness of how the texts that they examine are both produced by and productive of hegemonic discourses about gender in early modern England. Hopkins's The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy looks at plays from roughly 1610 to 1645. Unlike sixteenth-century tragedies, she argues, the plays from this later period began to present women not as passive victims but as "active agents in their own fate" (2). Although many of the characters she analyzes can be seen merely as villainesses—such as Livia in Middleton's Women Beware Women, Evadne in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy, and Vittoria Corombona in Webster's The White Devil—Hopkins argues for their heroic status. Further, she claims that their stories do not "reinforce misogyny" but rather "prise it open, revealing the grounds on which it was constructed" (3). The book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, and takes a historical approach to the plays, looking at medical, legal, and religious documents from the period to contextualize the plays' representations of women as tragic heroes. Hopkins persuasively argues that the prominence of leading female characters (many of whom lent their names or titles to the plays) both reflected and transformed their historical moment. Several of her analyses of individual plays are particularly intriguing. For instance, she reads the notoriously problematic Women Beware Women as Livia's tragedy of motherhood, and provides an incisive analysis of The Duchess of Malfi as a complex negotiation between body and soul, interior and exterior. In general, however, Hopkins is stronger on careful close readings of the texts than on rigorous historical grounding of the plays. Hopkins's book makes an interesting companion piece to Liebler's collection, The Female Tragic Hero in English Renaissance Drama. Although their similar titles suggest that they cover the same ground, there are significant differences between them. As one might expect from an edited collection, Liebler's volume is more wide-ranging than Hopkins's, covering a larger period of time and offering more varied approaches to the issue of women's representation in early modern tragedy. The essays are arranged chronologically, beginning with Robert S. Miola's piece on Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's 1566 play Jocasta, progressing through essays on Shakespeare (in particular Antony and Cleopatra), and concluding with the later tragedies of Heywood, Webster, Dekker, Ford, and Rowley. The collection finishes with Jeanne Addison Roberts's survey of the entire period, from Shakespeare to Marston, Webster, and Cary. As a whole, the essays run the gamut from illuminating (Linda Woodbridge's insistence on the importance of the Duchess of Malfi's [End...

In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy by Zenón Luis-Martínez (review)

In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy by Zenón Luis-Martínez (review)

In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy

Acknowledgements Introduction The Stage on Incest/Incest on the Stage: What for, Why, and How? Chapter One The Play of Incest: Toward a Poetics of Desire Chapter Two The House and the Stage Chapter Three Plots of Tyrants and the Place of Desire: Gorboduc and King Lear Chapter Four "Look Well Upon 't:" Incest as Tragic Spectacle in Stuart Domestic Drama Chapter Five Tragic Character: "Incestuous Persons" Postscript "An Explicable Place" Bibliography Index

Les Arts du spectacle au théâtre (1550–1700) ed. by Marie-France Wagner, Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic (review)

190 Reviews calls 'chapelles'. Further, he contends that each block is assigned to a heavenly body (a 'planet') and ancient god, and also to one ofthe seven sacraments. The 'planets' follow a traditional order: Moon (Diana), Mercury, Venus, Sun (Apollo), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Overall, this view may be defensible: it appears apt, for example, to begin with Diana, goddess of childbirth, or to assign Chapters 5-9 to Mercury, god of learning. Nevertheless, problems arise from the multifarious aspects of ancient gods. Mercury, for instance, is also the great deceiver, and Martin finds him anew within the 'chapelle' of Apollo: the triumph of Panurge over Thaumaste is summarized as 'Apollon, dieu de la raison, vaincu par Hermes, dieu de l'artifice' (p. 159). As to the alleged links between 'chapelles' and sacraments, they obviously imply that each 'chapelle' conjoins the pagan and the Christian. Given the syncretic tendency of the period, such combinations are conceivable. But, while it seems sensible enough to connect, for instance, baptism with Diana in the firstblock, some other associations look wholly conjectural, e.g. the eucharist with Venus in the third (Chapters 10-14). Because Martin's interpretation emphasizes the sacraments, which, he claims, are 'remis en question' in Pantagruel (p. 17), that apparent flaw is important. Certainly, one may hesitate over some of his readings in this area, such as the suggestion that, in the 'chapelle' of Venus and the eucharist, Baisecul and Humevesne represent Catholics and Protestants debating transubstantiation (p. 153). This study does, then, invite criticisms. And one must add that it also suffersfrom repetitious and sketchy exposition: even the nature of memoria is poorly explained. However, despite its imperfections, the book deserves attention, and Daniel Martin deserves gratitude for showing the potential interest of memoria for readers of Pan? tagruel. University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ian R. Morrison Les Arts du spectacle au theatre (1550-1700). Ed. by Marie-France Wagner and Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic. (Colloques, congres et conferences sur la Renais? sance, 23) Paris: Champion. 2001. 273 pp. FF 290. ISBN 2-7453-0462-3 Of the ten essays collected here, all but one (Benoit Bolduc's account ofa spectacular celebration in Bologna in 1565) concern the French theatre ofthe Renaissance and the seventeenth century. Predictably, centre stage is occupied by two ofthe major drama? tists: Antoine Soare's erudite analysis of a passage in Corneille's LTllusion comique shows that the occupations attributed to Clindor reflect the career progression of a professional actor rather than, as is often maintained, the activities of a picaresque hero; Benedicte Louvat looks at the structure and tone of Moliere's comedies-ballets, showing how their component elements (verbal and non-verbal, comic and galant) are fused together; while Dominique Lafon brings the insights of both historian and structuralist to a reconsideration of the theory of the collaboration between the two playwrights, balancing evidence of a close professional relationship against dissimilarities in dramaturgical structures. Several less canonical authors are treated by other contributors. Two focus predominantly on single plays: Pierre-Louis Vaillancourt shows how, in Jephte ou le Voeu, combining ancient and biblical traditions and affecting a neutrality which anticipated Grotius, Buchanan participated in the theo? logical debate on the relation between divine beneficence and Protestant tragedy's recurrent theme of the sacrifice of innocent victims; and Jeanne Bovet usefully revisits another old controversy, using Jodelle's Cleopdtre to demonstrate that rhetoric and theatricality should not be regarded as mutually exclusive concepts for the Renais? sance dramatist, since they were reconciled in the oratorical art of actio. The other four essays range more widely: Louise Frappier examines the conception of history MLRy 99.1, 2004 191 in Renaissance tragedy, arguing that the depiction of the misfortunes of the great had a dual role, both specular and oracular, whereby imitation of the past was also prophecy ofthe future; Laurence Giavarini contributes a complex discussion of mimesis in the dramatic pastoral between 1607 and 1635; Helene Visentin shows how the pre? sentation of supernatural figures in prologues testifies to an aesthetic shift between the period of Jodelle and the 1630s, during which verbal evocations painting a vivid picture (ie spectacle du discours') gave way to...

Œuvres complètes , Vol. I: Eûmes en rime, première partie: Neuf Livres des Poemes by Jean-Antoine de Baïf (review)

MLRy 99.1, 2004 191 in Renaissance tragedy, arguing that the depiction of the misfortunes of the great had a dual role, both specular and oracular, whereby imitation of the past was also prophecy ofthe future; Laurence Giavarini contributes a complex discussion of mimesis in the dramatic pastoral between 1607 and 1635; Helene Visentin shows how the pre? sentation of supernatural figures in prologues testifies to an aesthetic shift between the period of Jodelle and the 1630s, during which verbal evocations painting a vivid picture (ie spectacle du discours') gave way to stage spectacle achieved by the use of machinery; finally,in the volume's most substantial piece, Guy Spielmann addresses theoretical questions concerning the dichotomy between 'theatre' and 'spectacle', the latter exemplified here by the plethora of minor genres and 'irregular' productions which flourished in the last third of the seventeenth century. Spielmann argues that, whereas literary theatre is characterized by a narrative structure, a differentsystem of patterning, 'une syntaxe fondamentale spectaculaire' or 'syntaxe de l'effet', informs the dramatic output which has been marginalized by critics. The contributions by Spielmann and Visentin go some way towards justifying the title of this volume (which, given the name of the series, presumably derives from an academic confer? ence, but we are not told which). Overall, these essays, like Aristotle's Poetics, are as much concerned with Speech as with Spectacle. No matter. Though varied in length and approach, they are well informed and stimulating, and will be read with profitby specialists of early French theatre. University of Liverpool Alan Howe (Euvres completes, Vol. i: Euvres en rime,premiere partie: Neuf Livres des Poemes. By Jean-Antoine de Baif. Ed. by Jean Vignes, Guy Demerson, Perrine GalandHallyn , Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou, and Daniel Menager. (Textes de la Renaissance, 54) Paris: Champion. 2002. 1009 pp. ?75. ISBN 2-7453-0683-9. This represents the firstfruitsof the labours of a team of scholars working under the direction of Jean Vignes on an ambitious undertaking, the long-awaited nine-volume critical edition of Baif's complete surviving works, some hitherto unpublished. The Neuf Livres des Poemes were published in 1573 as volume 1 of the four-part Euvres en rime,since when the only edition has been that of Charles Marty-Laveaux (vol. 11 of Euvres en rime, 5 vols (Paris: Lemerre, 1881-90; repr. Geneva: Slatkine. 1966)), which has minimal annotation. After briefly outlining the principles governing the present project, Vignes chronicles Baif's life in relation to his work. There follow an introduction to the Euvres en rimeand one to the Poemes themselves, the formerlargely devoted to the organization of the collection, the latter dealing with structure within the Poemes, as well as chronology, the varied genres included, Bai'f's techniques of adapting his sources, and, most interestingly,his view of the Orphic role of the poet. A brief account is given ofthe versification and strophic forms; however, an evaluation of the poetic qualities would have been a welcome addition. The text is based on the 1573 publication, retaining the original spelling, but variant readings are given in the case of poems that had been previously published. One significant change has been made: the dedication to Charles IX ('Au Roy') has been incorporated into the firstbook of the Poemes, 'par souci de simplicite' (p. 529), despite the fact that in the original edition it is clearly separated from the Poemes and in fact functions as a preface to the Euvres en rime as a whole. This solution seems to me unsatisfactory as it obscures the status of the poem. That said, the critical apparatus is thorough and erudite. The individual books of the collection have been assigned to differenteditors, which leads to some unevenness in the style of annotation. For Book I, Guy Demerson, we are told (p. 13), 'a accepte de remanier son edition du Premier Livre des Poemes (Presses 192 Reviews Universitaires de Grenoble, 1975)'. This has involved replacing the orthography ofthe version of 'Le Premier des Meteores' printed in 1567 by that of 1573, but otherwise, apart from the mention of a certain number of more recent critical works, there has been little revision. The notes to this...

Cornélie: tragédie by Robert Garnier (review)

192 Reviews Universitaires de Grenoble, 1975)'. This has involved replacing the orthography ofthe version of 'Le Premier des Meteores' printed in 1567 by that of 1573, but otherwise, apart from the mention of a certain number of more recent critical works, there has been little revision. The notes to this book, illuminating and apposite as they are, contain frequent lengthy quotations from Latin sources which for the purposes of this volume might perhaps have been pruned a little. At almost a hundred pages, they are considerably longer than any other set. In the quarter-century since Demerson's pioneering publication, work in this field has continued, as is clear from the notes to the remaining books. Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou have edited Books II and III respectively, while Vignes himself has undertaken Books IV to VI, leaving the final three books to Daniel Menager. In introducing each piece the editors consider the likely date of composition (the Poemes were written over a period of twenty-three years), the context, and the dedicatee, sometimes adding a short and specific bibliography. Detailed notes indicate sources, elucidate obscure passages, and explain historical and mythological allusions. The reader is further helped by an extensive glossary. However, there is no general bibliography. Instead, references are made to Vignes's own comprehensive volume on Bai'f in the series 'Bibliographie des Ecrivains Francais' (Paris and Rome: Memini, 1999). High standards have been set by this admirable edition, which will enable Ba'if's poetry to become better known and more justly appreciated. Subsequent volumes will be eagerly awaited. Lancaster University Elizabeth Vinestock Cornelie: tragedie. By Robert Garnier. Ed. by Jean-Claude Ternaux. (Theatre complet, V: Textes de la Renaissance, 53) Paris: Champion. 2002. 178 pp. ISBN 2-7453-0675-8. This, the latest in Champion's complete edition of Garnier's plays, is a welcome ad? dition to the series. Its editor Jean-Claude Ternaux has already produced an edition ofthe earlier play Porcie (see MLR, 97 (2002), 184-85). This, while showing consid? erable scholarship, was in part marred by aspects of its presentation, which made a proper appreciation of what was going on in the play difficult.These problems have, however, been effectivelyovercome in the present volume. The footnotes now appear at the bottom of each page, and relate clearly to the individual lines of the text; they are very full, and reveal the extent of Garnier's debt not only to the ancients but also to contemporary authors, in particular Muret and Grevin; and the reader, through seeing these references alongside each other and alongside the text, gets a proper idea of Garnier's methods of imitation and of contaminatio. The bibliography is full, and reveals an acquaintance with most of the writings (French, British, and American) on French Renaissance tragedy. The introduction is a balanced assessment of Cornelie as a typical example of the genre, which stresses the danger of attempting to graftonto the play more modern concerns such as Teffet-personnage', of tryingto associate the characters too closely with French sixteenth-century counterparts, or of ignoring the essential role played by topoi and 'set pieces' such as dream scenes or formal laments. Above all, like Jean-Dominique Beaudin in his editions of Antigone (Paris: Cham? pion: 1997) and La Troade (Paris: Champion, 1999), Ternaux stresses the essential unity of a play which, in modern terms, might seem dramatically shapeless. Rejecting Lebegue's and Faguet's view ofthe play as 'une suite d'expositions' in which at times Tinteret se disperse', he suggests that 'a la maniere d'un mosai'ste, le dramaturge a juxtapose des elements dont la coherence n'apparait vraiment que lorsque l'on considere l'ensemble' (p. 12). The political discussions of Act IV fall into place once we see Cornelie, wife of Crassus and Pompey, and daughter of Scipio, as an exemplumof MLR, 99.1, 2004 193 Rome and the Republic, with her personal grief for her loved ones being a reflection of a greater grief forthe fate of Rome itself,and the loss of liberty.All in all, this is an excellent edition of one of Garnier's least-known and least...

The female hero in English Renaissance tragedy

The female hero in English Renaissance tragedy

Dido to Daphne: Early Modern Death in Spenser’s Shorter Poems

Recent scholarship on early modern death provides a compelling context for viewing Spenser, especially his shorter poems. Such scholarship emphasizes a new philosophy of death emergent in late-sixteenth-century England: death is annihilation, desire is death, and so humans triumph only through willing the performance of death. Spenser’s poetry can be situated along the historic divide between these secular notions and more Christian ones. In November, Spenser presents Dido’s death within a Christian poetics: when Colin is consoled though his transcendent vision, Spenser advertises his ability to help the nation mourn. His Complaints and such elegies as Astrophel fulfill this advertisement. Yet one poem lies beyond the poetics of Christian redemption: in Daphnaida, the process of death does not lead to transcendence or consolation. In this poem, which shatters the intertextual line of mourning from Theocritus to Chaucer, Spenser enters the dark terrain of early modern fatality. Anticipating Renaissance tragedy, he tells how the “ghost” of Daphne haunts the early modern imagination, including his own. This haunting may animate Fowre Hymnes and The Mutabilitie Cantos to produce their final affirmation.

Hamlet and the revenge of memory

Taking stock of a number of recent studies of the refashioning of death and of memory in Renaissance Tragedy, as well as of Hamlet's inscriptions of contemporary history, my paper examines cultural anxieties about the Stuarts succession and about death by plague, which coalesce in the disjointment of the revenge pattern and the collapse of death's meanings. The revenge tragedy foregrounds the issue of memory while pushing in the background redemptive deeds. Focussing on questionability and on disjointment as on the main themes of Hamlet, cultural analysis and close reading allow us to specify the incompleteness of the refashioning of death, of revenge and of memory. Instead of tying or untying a knot of meanings, Hamlet leaves loose ends that subsequent mythologizing has taken hold of.

Shakespeare and Violence

List of illustrations Preface 1. Introduction: 'Exterminate all the brutes' 2. Shakespeare's culture of violence 3. Shakespeare and the display of violence 4. Plays and movies: Richard III and Romeo and Juliet 5. Shakespeare on war: King John to Henry V 6. Violence, Renaissance tragedy, and Hamlet 7. The central tragedies and violence 8. Roman violence and power games 9. Violence and the late plays 10. Afterword Index.

Epizia: A Renaissance Tragedy by G. B. Giraldi , Philip Horne Gli Eudaimoni: An Italian Renaissance Comedy by G. B. Giraldi , Philip Horne Selene: An Italian Renaissance Tragedy by G. B. Giraldi , Philip Horne (review)

some of its more obvious neoplatonic overtones, since Poliziano 'si muove in una cornice di poetica che rinviaall'esempiodi Stazio, ed e sull'ideadi subitus calor, di un dettato di rapidae veemente aggregazione, che egli principalmentefa leva'. The article on the Mantounderlines its rhetorical structurefrom the exordium in elegiac verse, to the narratio(lines 1-46), argomentatio (11. 47-318), and peroratio (11. 319-73). The poem's high point comes in the perorationwhen the main theme of the entirepoem isrestated:'lapoesia e eterna,la poesia rivelanello spiritoumano lo stesso grado di necessita delle rotazioni astrali, delle stagioni, delle maree, dei processi che interessano gli elementi nell'incessante metamorfosi del Tutto.' The Rusticus is seen to be even more in debt to the poetics of subitus calor, as the humanist shifts apparently at will from Hesiod to Virgil's pastoral poetry. Poliziano's own Arcadiaemerges as distinctand original:althoughbased on the ruralworld as idyll, thisis seen also as the cradleof the essentialmilitaryvirtues,as acknowledgedby the major Roman writersin this area from Cato to Vegetius. As Bettinzoli puts it, 'la poesia allontanada se l'impuritadelle sollecitazionimondane, l'eserciziodelpotere, gli onori, le ricchezze. Dietro l'immagine del rusticus siprofilacosi, a poco a poco, il volto sacerdotaledel vate'. UNIVERSITY OF ROME, LA SAPIENZA ITALO PANTANI Epizia: A RenaissanceTragedy.By G. B. GIRALDI. Ed. by PHILIP HORNE. (Medieval and Renaissance Studies, I4) Lewiston and Lampeter:Edwin Mellen Press. 1996. xlix + 174 pp. $89.95. Gli Eudaimoni: An ItalianRenaissance Comedy.By G. B. GIRALDI.Ed. by PHILIP HORNE. (Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 19) Lewiston and Lampeter: EdwinMellen Press. 1999. lxxxi + 140pp. $89.95. Selene:An Italian RenaissanceTragedy. By G. B. GIRALDI. Ed. by PHILIPHORNE. (Medieval and Renaissance Studies, I3) Lewiston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press. I996. lii+ 177pp. $89.95. In his publication of these three examples of Renaissance drama, Home presents the original Italian texts with some minor emendations and important notes regardinghis transcription.The glossaryat the end of each workprovesinvaluable, especially for the Latinisms and basic morphology no longer found in modern Italian. The notes afford a modern English translation of the more difficult expressions and turns of phrase, together with illuminating points of syntax and grammar. The editions thus become small handbooks, useful for teachers and students alike, of sixteenth-century language usage in a small but significant northern Italian court, that of Ferraraunder Duke Ercole II d'Este, between I532 (Giraldi's appointment to the Chair of Philosophy by the Duke) and I56I (his dismissalby Duke Ercole's son and successor, Alfonso II). They fill the gap, as it were, between the death of Ariosto in 1533 and the arrivalof Torquato Tasso in Ferrarain I565. Before the text of each drama, there is a two- or three-partintroduction. In the case of Selene,Horne introduces the reader to an appreciation of the work as a learned, entertainingexample of the literarygenre flourishingat the time, namely, the manualson courtlybehaviourat the onset of the Counter-Reformation.Though not wanting to dedicate the introduction to the literaryaspects of the play, Home does, however, place it in its broader context of anti-misogynisticliterature,which drewupon an illustriousantecedent, Boccaccio's Griselda. In not treatingthe literary aspects, however, Home does not explain why Giraldi termed the play a tragedia some of its more obvious neoplatonic overtones, since Poliziano 'si muove in una cornice di poetica che rinviaall'esempiodi Stazio, ed e sull'ideadi subitus calor, di un dettato di rapidae veemente aggregazione, che egli principalmentefa leva'. The article on the Mantounderlines its rhetorical structurefrom the exordium in elegiac verse, to the narratio(lines 1-46), argomentatio (11. 47-318), and peroratio (11. 319-73). The poem's high point comes in the perorationwhen the main theme of the entirepoem isrestated:'lapoesia e eterna,la poesia rivelanello spiritoumano lo stesso grado di necessita delle rotazioni astrali, delle stagioni, delle maree, dei processi che interessano gli elementi nell'incessante metamorfosi del Tutto.' The Rusticus is seen to be even more in debt to the poetics of subitus calor, as the humanist shifts apparently at will from Hesiod to Virgil's pastoral poetry. Poliziano's own Arcadiaemerges as distinctand original:althoughbased on the ruralworld as idyll, thisis seen also as the...

NATURAL HISTORIES: LEARNING FROM ANIMALS IN T.H. WHITE'S ARTHURIAN SEQUENCE

AbstractThis paper examines the changes T.H. White made to The Sword in the Stone between its first publication in 1938 and subsequent appearance as the first part of the Once and Future King in 1958. These changes are related to the immediate historical context of World War II, and also to the wider context of children's literature dealing with the relationship between the child and the ''natural world''. Rather than seeing White's texts as reflecting a post-Enlightenment idealisation, placing both child and nature beyond the bounds of culture and human limitation, the essay argues that even in the first version White's medieval worldview is constructed from a sophisticated and deliberately anachronistic medley of discourses including medieval codes of hunting and chivalry, Renaissance tragedy and Victorian natural history. These combine to create an exclusively male world, which is analysed as part of the ideological construction of a masculine relationship to the environment based on a ''natural'' nstinct to hunt and kill. White's growing pacifism leads to the insertion in the later version of episodes replacing this relationship with models of cooperative animal behaviour, and even introducing a female mentor for the hero.