Revenge Tragedy and the Drama of Commemoration in Reforming England

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Routledge, 2016 M12 5 - 176 pages
Considering major works by Kyd, Shakespeare, Middleton and Webster among others, this book transforms current understanding of early modern revenge tragedy. Examing the genre in light of historical revisions to England's Reformations, and with appropriate regard to the social history of the dead, it shows revenge tragedy is not an anti-Catholic and Reformist genre, but one rooted in, and in dialogue with, traditional Catholic culture. Arguing its tragedies are bound to the age's funerary performances, it provides a new view of the contemporary theatre and especially its role in the religious upheavals of the period.

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Contents

Acknowledgements
76
Revenge and the Melodrama of Mourning in The Spanish Tragedy
Titus Andronicus and Hamlet
Conclusion
Index

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About the author (2016)

Thomas Rist, PhD, is Lecturer in English at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He has published widely on Renaissance drama and is the author of one previous book: Shakespeare's Romances and the Politics of Counter-Reformation (1999).

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