Michelle O'Callaghan

Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Thomas Middleton is a major English Renaissance dramatist, in league with Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. Known for his dark humor and wry treatment of sexuality, morality, and politics, Middleton is a consummate professional dramatist, combining the visual and the verbal to shocking effect. Michelle O'Callaghan studies the stagecraft of Middleton's major plays. The playwright experimented with a range of genres--city comedy, tragicomedy, romance, and revenge tragedy. O'Callaghan figures how these plays work in terms of the early modern theater and dramatic genres, and she elucidates the broader cultural issues shaping the plays. She also introduces the critical readings of Middleton's plays and their modern performances, mapping how modern critics, producers, dramatists, and filmmakers treat Middleton's dark and challenging works in our time.

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Renaissance Dramatists Series Editor, Sean McEvoy An invaluable resource for all students of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, each volume in the series provides an authoritative and up-to-date survey of a major dramatist's work with a focus on the plays in performance on stage and screen. Each guide provides: * An informative account of the writer's entire dramatic output, with an emphasis on those plays most frequently studied at university, college and school * Detailed and relevant contextual information on history, culture, politics and biography * A lucid survey of important recent criticism * Original critical readings of the major plays Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist Michelle O'Callaghan This guide introduces a major English Renaissance dramatist and contemporary of Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson, via his treatment of sexuality, morality and politics as well as his stagecraft. The book analyses how each of Middleton's plays work in terms of the early modern theatre and dramatic genres, as well as exploring the broader cultural issues shaping the plays. It introduces critical responses to Middleton's works as well as modern performances, demonstrating how modern critics, producers, dramatists and film makers see Middleton's dark, playful and challenging plays as speaking to our times. Key Features * Provides wide coverage of Middleton's city comedies, tragedies, and collaborative plays and readings of The Roaring Girl, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Revenger's Tragedy, Women Beware Women, and The Changeling *Uses the most recent edition available, the Oxford Middleton (2007) *Guides the reader through criticism of the plays as well as recent work on early modern theatre and culture *Emphasis on Middleton's stagecraft and on modern adaptations and film versions of his plays Michelle O'Callaghan is Reader in Early Modern Literature in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Edinburgh University Press
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 7. März 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 213mm x 154mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 367g
• ISBN-13: 9780748627806
• ISBN-10: 0748627804
• Artikelnr.: 25856506

Autorenporträt

Michelle O'Callaghan is Reader in Early Modern Literature in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Reading. She is the author of The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and The 'Shepheards Nation': Jacobean Spenserians and early Stuart political culture (Oxford University Press, 2000), and has published essays on early modern literature and politics, sociability, travel, and ghosts.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Life
Chapter 2: City Comedies: Mad World, My Masters, Michaelmas Term, and A Trick to Catch the Old One
Chapter 3: Authorship, Collaboration and the London Theatre: Middleton and Dekker, The Roaring Girl
Chapter 4: Tragicomedy and the City: Chaste Maid in Cheapside and No Wit, No Help Like a Woman
Chapter 5: The Playwright as Craftsman: Middleton's Civic Pageants
Chapter 6: Plotting Revenge: Revenger's Tragedy and Women Beware Women
Chapter 7: Partners in Tragedy: Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling
Chapter 8: Politics and Theatre: A Game at Chess
Bibliography