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Literary Studies: Plays & Playwrights
A Critical Edition
Bern, 2021 . 252 pp ., 2 fig . b/w . Restoration Drama. Texts and Contexts. Vol. 2
pb . • ISBN 978-3-0343-4177-6 CHF 62 .– / €D 52 .95 / €A 54 .40 / € 49 .50 / £ 41 .– / US-$ 59 .95 eBook (SUL) • ISBN 978-3-0343-4277-3 CHF 62 .– / €D 52 .95 / €A 54 .50 / € 49 .50 / £ 41 .– / US-$ 59 .95
William Mountfort’s Greenwich Park (1691), produced in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, takes comic action to the green spaces east of London where urbane rakes court witty young ladies surrounded by a lively gallery including roistering citizens, an adulterous wife and a charismatic kept mistress . This first-ever critical edition offers a fully annotated modernized text, together with an introduction analysing the processes of evolution and transition articulated by this comedy on several, interrelated levels: from the old hard comedy of the 1670s to the new humane comedy of the early 1690s, from a glamorous view of debauchery and excess to the more sober morals promoted by William and Mary, and from the Town settings of Carolean comedy to the suburbs .
Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair
Berlin, 2022 . 192 S .
hb . • ISBN 978-3-631-85247-7 CHF 50 .– / €D 42 .95 / €A 44 .20 / € 40 .20 / £ 33 .– / US-$ 48 .95 eBook (SUL) • ISBN 978-3-631-85306-1 CHF 50 .– / €D 42 .95 / €A 44 .20 / € 40 .20 / £ 33 .– / US-$ 48 .95
Convention and Contravention in Ben Jonson’s Three Comedies: Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair is a book about Jonson’s convention of comedy that is a disguise for the realities of life . The book aims to show the importance of the truths that are generally away from the human eye in Jonson’s time through scrutiny of Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair . Selected plays are in a dialogue with Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth Night, and close analysis of the texts of the plays offers the reader a detailed study of the upside down world of the comedic, carnivalesque period that enables characters free themselves of their responsibilities . The plays end in harmony, taking all scattered parts of the disarray of the carnival time back to its normal . Madness, lack of morality, deceitfulness, confusion, misunderstandings, and disguise are common elements in all the plays discussed in the book . Ben Jonson takes the opportunity and presents a critical viewpoint about the Elizabethan and Jacobean laxity and leniency, making the carnivalesque spirit central to his criticism . This book intends to immerse into ways in which characters create chaos within themselves in the selected plays . Shakespeare’s selected plays are supplementary texts that richly add layers, branches, and offices to the reading of Jonson’s society rather than just enriching the comedic impact of the performances .
Laura Martínez-García• María José Álvarez-Faedo (eds.) (Re)defining gender in early modern English drama
Power, sexualities and ideologies in text and performance
Bern, 2020 . 258 pp ., 1 tables . Critical Perspectives on English and American Literature, Communication and Culture. Vol. 25
pb . • ISBN 978-3-0343-4252-0 CHF 73 .– / €D 62 .95 / €A 64 .70 / € 58 .90 / £ 48 .– / US-$ 70 .95 eBook (SUL) • ISBN 978-3-0343-4288-9 CHF 73 .– / €D 62 .95 / €A 64 .80 / € 58 .90 / £ 48 .– / US-$ 71 .95
Taking as its common thread the overtly theatrical nature of early modern society and its cultural and political manifestations this book studies dramatic texts, dedications, autobiographies, adaptations and performative practices, to prove that the boundaries between on and off stage performances of gender are blurred . Thus, the limits that separate theatre and life are highly permeable and the relations between both are bidirectional: the performativity of gender and identity is an idea that the theatre takes from and transfers to society . This concept is applied to a wide timeframe creating a dialogue between different historical times and cultural backgrounds . Furthermore, the authors explore sexualities as written and performed by both men and women, offering a wider scope to determine whether and to what extent normative gender roles are being questioned, contested or reinforced .
