The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580-1630OUP Oxford, 2006 M02 23 - 344 pages Drawing on entirely new evidence, The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts 1580-1630 examines the history of English dramatic form and its relationship to the mathematics, technology, and early scientific thought during the Renaissance period. The book demonstrates how practical modes of thinking that were typical of the sixteenth century resulted in new genres of plays and a new vocabulary for problems of poetic representation. In the epistemological moment the book recovers, we find new ideas about form and language that would become central to Renaissance literary discourse; in this same moment, too, we find new ways of thinking about the relationship between theory and practice that are typical of modernity, new attitudes towards spatial representation, and a new interest in both poetics and mathematics as distinctive ways of producing knowledge about the world. By emphasizing the importance of theatrical performance, the book engages with continuing debates over the cultural function of the early modern stage and with scholarship on the status of modern authorship. When we consider playwrights in relation to the theatre rather than the printed book, they appear less as 'authors' than as figures whose social position and epistemological presuppositions were very similar to the craftsmen, surveyors, and engineers who began to flourish during the sixteenth century and whose mathematical knowledge made them increasingly sought after by men of wealth and power. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 44
Page vii
... specific problems concerning epistemology in two primary domains of intellectual and social activity: poetics and early scientific thought. Taken as a whole, the book presents one stage in the historical formation of the disciplines ...
... specific problems concerning epistemology in two primary domains of intellectual and social activity: poetics and early scientific thought. Taken as a whole, the book presents one stage in the historical formation of the disciplines ...
Page viii
... specific words and the movement of words among different domains of intellectual and social activity. This method will be familiar to students of Raymond Williams's Keywords or of Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge; among earlymodern ...
... specific words and the movement of words among different domains of intellectual and social activity. This method will be familiar to students of Raymond Williams's Keywords or of Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge; among earlymodern ...
Page 3
... specific conventions and of its social function (the enduring object of current historicist criticism) requires a corollary shift of attention beyond the fields that have conventionally informed modern scholarship. In what follows, I ...
... specific conventions and of its social function (the enduring object of current historicist criticism) requires a corollary shift of attention beyond the fields that have conventionally informed modern scholarship. In what follows, I ...
Page 14
... specific epistemological presumptions of those medieval and early-modern activities that promised insights into natural process or control over the natural world but which often remained of doubtful authority, their practitioners of ...
... specific epistemological presumptions of those medieval and early-modern activities that promised insights into natural process or control over the natural world but which often remained of doubtful authority, their practitioners of ...
Page 16
... a form in the process of coming into being ( forma formans)' (p. 43). I thank Caroline Levine for helping me to clarify my terms and arguments in this section. to the specific ways in which that content has been 16 Introduction.
... a form in the process of coming into being ( forma formans)' (p. 43). I thank Caroline Levine for helping me to clarify my terms and arguments in this section. to the specific ways in which that content has been 16 Introduction.
Other editions - View all
The English Renaissance Stage:Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial ... Henry S. Turner No preview available - 2006 |
The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial ... Henry S. Turner No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
action analysis appear argues argument Aristotle arts aspects authority become building century Chapter character cited classical contemporary conventions critical Dekker demonstrate derived describe discussion distinct draw early early-modern effect English entire epistemological field figure finally follows formal geometry George Puttenham Harvey iconic ideas imagination important interest invention Jonson kind knowledge language later lines literary London mathematical matter meaning measurement mechanical methods mode nature necessary notion object offers particular passage performance period philosophy play plot poesy poet poetic position possible practical principles printed problems production provides reader reading reasoning reference relationship remains representation requires rhetoric rules scene sense Sidney Sidney’s signified similar simply social space spatial specific stage structure techniques theatre theatrical things thinking thought translation units universal writing