1st Edition
The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature
With its many rites of initiation (religious, educational, professional or sexual), Elizabethan and Jacobean education emphasized both imitation and discovery in a struggle to bring population to a minimal literacy, while more demanding techniques were being developed for the cultural elite. The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern English Literature examines the question of transmission and of the educational procedures in16th- and 17th-century England by emphasizing deviant practices that questioned, reassessed or even challenged pre-established cultural norms and traditions. This volume thus alternates theoretical analyses with more specific readings in order to investigate the multiple ways in which ideas then circulated. It also addresses the ways in which the dominant cultural forms of the literature and drama of Shakespeare’s age were being subverted. In this regard, its various contributors analyze how the interrelated processes of initiation, transmission and transgression operated at the core of early modern English culture, and how Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, or lesser known poets and playwrights such as Thomas Howell, Thomas Edwards and George Villiers, managed to appropriate these cultural processes in their works.
Part 1 Theories and Philosophies of Transmission: Ship of Fools: Foucault and the Shakespeareans. Shakespeare's paradoxes of excellence. Shakespeare and the atomist heritage. Part 2 Initiation Practices: Hilliard and Sidney's 'rule of the eye'. Mercurial apprentices in city comedies. The courtesan and her mother in Middleton's A Mad World, my Masters. Rumour and second-hand knowledge in Much Ado About Nothing. Part 3 Political and Spiritual Issues: Marlowe's political balancing act: religion and translatio imperii in Doctor Faustus (B). Magic, manipulation and misrule in Doctor Faustus and Measure for Measure. Shakespeare and the violation of sanctuary. Limited being: revising Hamlet in The Revenger's Tragedy. Part 4 Transgressions of Gender and Genre: Cephalus and Procris: the transmission of a myth in early modern England. Out-Oviding Ovid in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. From intertextual to gender transgression in Middleton's The Witch. 'Transversing' and 'transprosing': the case of George Villiers's The Rehearsal (1671). Romeo and Juliet in Brazil: Grupo Galpao's Romeu e Julieta. Afterword: 'Love's transgression'.
Biography
Sophie Chiari is Professor of Early Modern Literature at Blaise Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand (CERHAC, French National Centre for Scientific Research).
"...readers should find something of interest in this volume’s diverse case studies."
- Rajiv Thind, The University of Queensland in Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, volume 33.1 (2016).
