The Uses of this World
Thinking Space in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary, and Jonson
Awdur(on) Andrew Hiscock
Iaith: Saesneg
Dosbarthiad(au): Literary Studies
- Hydref 2004 ·216x138mm
- · Clawr Caled - 9780708318881
- · eLyfr - pdf - 9781423741763
The Uses of this World examines how early modern theatre texts dramatize the ways in which cultural space is produced. It demonstrates that the theatre engaged fully with the fundamental change in the social and philosophical organization of space which took place in this period. Andrew Hiscock argues that Renaissance drama interrogates models of social organization and spatial boundaries defined by property relations, economic hierarchies, historical custom and kinship ties, and stresses that space is not a neutral, fixed and passive container, but emerges instead as a socially constructed process. Plays considered include Hamlet, The Jew of Malta, Antony and Cleopatra, Tragedie of Mariam (Elizabeth Cary), Volpone and The Alchemist.
Introduction (I) Thinking Space for Hamlet; Introduction (II) 'What's Hecuba to him...': Imitative Space and myths of Belonging in Hamlet; Chapter One Enclosing 'infinite riches in a little room'. The question of cultural marginality in The Jew of Malta; Chapter Two 'Here is my Space'. The Politics of Appropriation in Antony and Cleopatra; Chapter Three Erotic Sovereignty: Crises of Desire and Faith in The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII; Chapter Four The Hateful Cuckoo. Elizabeth Cary's Tragedie of Mariam, a Renaissance drama of Dispossession; Chapter Five Urban Dystopia: the Colonising of Venice in Volpone; Chapter Six 'With your ungoverned haste'. The passing of Time and Empires in The Alchemist