Early modern spectatorship : interpreting English culture, 1500-1780 / edited by Ronald Huebert and David McNeil.

Date:
[2019]
  • Books

About this work

Description

"What did it mean to be a spectator during the lifetime of Shakespeare or of Aphra Behn? In Early Modern Spectatorship contributors use the idea of spectatorship to reinterpret canonical early modern texts and bring visibility to relatively unknown works. While many early modern spectacles were designed to influence those who watched, the very presence of spectators and their behaviour could alter the conduct and the meaning of the event itself. In the case of public executions, for example, audiences could both observe and be observed by the executioner and the condemned. Drawing on work in the digital humanities and theories of cultural spectacle, these essays discuss subjects as various as the death of Desdemona in Othello, John Donne's religious orientation, Ned Ward's descriptions of London, and Louis Laguerre's murals painted for the residences of English aristocrats. A lucid exploration of subtle questions, Early Modern Spectatorship identifies, imagines, and describes the spectator's experience in early modern culture."-- Provided by publisher.

Publication/Creation

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2019]

Physical description

xiv, 414 pages : black and white illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Contributors

Contents

Early Modern Spectatorship: An Overview / Ronald Huebert and David McNeil -- Making Spectacles: Spectatorship and Authority on the Early Modern Stage / Nova Myhill -- "Shame's pure blush": Shakespeare and the Ethics of Spectatorship / William W.E. Slights -- Spectatorship and Repression in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night / Ian McAdam -- "Most grateful deceptions of the sight": Optical Technologies in Restoration England / Emily M. West -- Dying in Earnest: Public Executions and Their Audiences / Ronald Huebert and David McNeil -- Looking at John Donne Looking at God / Ronald Huebert -- Sidney Visualized: Thomas Lant's Sequitur celebritas (1588) and the Funeral Construction of an English National Hero / Rick Bowers -- "Watching the Watchers": The Spectatorship Game in Ned Ward's The London Spy / David McNeil -- Prospect Views: Landscapes, Knowledge, and Political Spectatorship in the Eighteenth Century / Frans de Bruyn -- A Case Study on Spectatorship and the Visual Arts: Democritus and Heraclitus / John Lepage -- Spectacle and the Chronotope of Progress in William Hogarth's London / Allison Muri -- Mural Painting and Spectatorship in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain / Lydia Hamlett.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (pages 359-397) and index.

Languages

Subjects

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    ZG.41.AA5-7
    		Open shelves

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9780773556775
  • 077355677X