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
Page 1
... classical influences on English drama, for instance, that were either out of date or narrowly defined in scope. Certainly much ground-breaking work has examined the intellectual content of early-modern plays; indeed, the discursive turn ...
... classical influences on English drama, for instance, that were either out of date or narrowly defined in scope. Certainly much ground-breaking work has examined the intellectual content of early-modern plays; indeed, the discursive turn ...
Page 2
... classical prescriptions for drama as a distinct mode of poetic art.1 Once this reconceptualization of the object of inquiry has 1 For the modern critic, of course, nearly all the surviving evidence for theatrical practice derives from ...
... classical prescriptions for drama as a distinct mode of poetic art.1 Once this reconceptualization of the object of inquiry has 1 For the modern critic, of course, nearly all the surviving evidence for theatrical practice derives from ...
Page 3
... classical literary theory , as is often presumed of playwrights such as Ben Jonson , nor simply from the legacy of medieval staging and the Tudor interludes , as is often argued about Shakespeare , but from contemporary developments in ...
... classical literary theory , as is often presumed of playwrights such as Ben Jonson , nor simply from the legacy of medieval staging and the Tudor interludes , as is often argued about Shakespeare , but from contemporary developments in ...
Page 9
... classical precepts when confronted with the formal problems posed by stage representation . When , in the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour ( 1599 ) , the critic - spectator Mitis asks whether the playwright Asper will ' observe ...
... classical precepts when confronted with the formal problems posed by stage representation . When , in the Induction to Every Man Out of His Humour ( 1599 ) , the critic - spectator Mitis asks whether the playwright Asper will ' observe ...
Page 11
... classical authors but by comparing it to practical geometry, early-modern technology, and the mechanical arts that were flourishing around them. As Henry Peacham would argue some years later, praising geometry in his Compleat Gentleman ...
... classical authors but by comparing it to practical geometry, early-modern technology, and the mechanical arts that were flourishing around them. As Henry Peacham would argue some years later, praising geometry in his Compleat Gentleman ...
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
A. W. Johnson action analogy analysis argues argument Aristotelian Aristotle Aristotle's Blundeville century Chapter Cicero cited classical comedy concept contemporary conventions critical Dekker demonstrate derived describe device diagrams dialectic discussion distinct dramatic early-modern Eastward Hoe emblematic emplotment English epistemological ethical fictional figure Gabriel Harvey geometry George Puttenham Gresham College Harvey Harvey's Humour iconic imagination Inigo Jones instruments intellectual invention Jardine Jonson judgement Justiniano King Lear knowledge language Lear lines literary London manuals masque mathematical measurement methods mimetic mode nature Nicomachean Ethics notion object offstage particular passage performance Philip Sidney philosophy platform stage platte play playwrights plot poesy poet poetic practitioners principles problems provides Puttenham Quintilian reader representation rhetoric scene semiosis semiotic Sidney Sidney's similar sixteenth-century social space spatial arts specific structure techniques theatre theatrical theoretical Thomas tion topographic translation universal urban Vitruvius Volpone writing