Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4094-4008-6
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 308 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 634 g

Engaging with fiction and history-and reading both genres as texts permeated with early modern anxieties, desires, and apprehensions-this collection scrutinizes the historical intersection of early modern European superstitions and English stage literature. Contributors analyze the cultural mechanisms that shape, preserve, and transmit beliefs. They investigate where superstitions come from and how they are sustained and communicated within early modern European society. It has been proposed by scholars that once enacted on stage and thus brought into contact with the literary-dramatic perspective, belief systems that had been preserved and reinforced by historical-literary texts underwent a drastic change. By highlighting the connection between historical-literary and literary-dramatic culture, this volume tests and explores the theory that performance of superstitions opened the way to disbelief.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mccarthy, Andrew D.

Theile, Verena

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword: Something of the Night Introduction: Superstitions, Literature, History, and the Creative Imagination Part 1 Early Modern Superstitions: Religion, Reformation, and the History of Fear 1 Popular Magic, Witchcraft, and Lutheran Religious Literature 2 “Let not Phantasies Misgouerne You”: Entertainment as Religious Polemic (The Case of Barnabe Riche) 3 Early Modern Literary Engagements with Fear, Witchcraft, the Devil, and that Damned Dr. Faustus Part 2 Witchcraft on Trial 4 The Supernatural on the Stage: An Analysis of Early Modern Literary and Theatrical Representations of Lancashire’s Witches and Demons 5 Vision on Trial in The Late Lancashire Witches 6 The Joint-Stool on the Early Modern Stage: Witches, Wives, and Murderers in Macbeth and Arden of Faversham vi Staging the Superstitions of Early Modern Europe 7 The Medicalization of “Midnight Hags”: Perverting Post-Menopausal and Political Motherhood in Macbeth Part 3 Stage Dissections 8 “Such a Sinner of His Memory”: Prospero, Bruno, and the Failures of Neo-Platonic Memory Magic 9 Prophecies, Dreams, and the Plays of John Lyly 10 Travelers’ Tales: Magic and Superstition on Early Modern European and London Stages

Über Autor(innen)

Verena Theile is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature at North Dakota State University, USA. Andrew D. McCarthy is Assistant Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, USA.