For the first time, a group of distinguished authors come together to provide an authoritative exploration of the cultural history of tragedy in the Middle Ages. Reports of the so-called death of medieval tragedy, they argue, have been greatly exaggerated; and, for the Middle Ages, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Eight essays offer a blueprint for future study as they take up the extensive but much-neglected medieval engagement with tragic genres, modes, and performances from the vantage points of gender, politics, theology, history, social theory, anthropology, philosophy, economics, and media studies. The result? A recuperated medieval tragedy that is as much a branch of literature as it is of theology, politics, law, or ethics and which, at long last, rejoins the millennium-long conversation about one of the world’s most enduring art forms. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

The period covered by this volume in the Cultural History of Tragedy set is bookended by two shockingly similar historical events: the beheading of a king, Charles I of England in 1649 and Louis XIV of France in 1793. The period between these two dates saw enormous political, social and economic changes that altered European society’s cultural life. Tragedy, which had dominated the European stage at the beginning of this period, gradually saw itself replaced by new literary forms, culminating in the gradual decline of theatrical tragedy from the heights it had reached in the 1660s. The dominance of France’s military and cultural prestige during this period is reflected in the important, almost exclusive, space dedicated in this volume to the French stage. This book covers the tragedies of France’s two greatest playwrights — Pierre Corneille (1606-84) and Jean Racine (1639-99) — which would dominate not only the French stage but, through translations and adaptations, became the model of tragic theater across Europe, finding imitators in England (Dryden), Italy (Alfieri) and as far afield as Russia. This dominance continued well into the 18th century with the triumph of Voltaire’s tragedies. This volume also examines how the writings of Diderot and Lessing changed the direction of theatre and how after the Revolution, in the writings of Goethe, Shiller, Hegel, tragedy and the tragic were reimagined and became the sign of European modernity. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

This volume traces a path across the metamorphoses of tragedy and the tragic in Western cultures during the bourgeois age of nations, revolutions, and empires, roughly delimited by the French Revolution and the First World War. Its starting point is the recognition that tragedy did not die with Romanticism, as George Steiner famously argued over half a century ago, but rather mutated and dispersed, converging into a variety of unstable, productive forms both on the stage and off. In turn, the tragic as a concept and mode transformed itself under the pressure of multiple social, historical and political-ideological phenomena. This volume therefore deploys a narrative centred on hybridization extending across media, genres, demographics, faiths both religious and secular, and national boundaries. The essays also tell a story of how tragedy and the tragic offered multiple means of capturing the increasingly fragmented perception of reality and history that emerged in the 19th century. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this book leading scholars come together to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging overview of tragedy in theatre and other media from 1920 to the present. The 20th century is often considered to have witnessed the death of tragedy as a theatrical genre, but it was marked by many tragic events and historical catastrophes, from two world wars and genocide to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the anticipation and onset of climate change. The authors in this volume wrestle with this paradox and consider the degree to which the definitions, forms and media of tragedy were transformed in the modern period and how far the tragic tradition—updated in performance—still spoke to 20th- and 21st-century challenges. While theater remains the primary focus of investigation in this strikingly illustrated book, the essays also cover tragic representation—often re-mediated, fragmented and provocatively questioned—in film, art and installation, photography, fiction and creative non-fiction, documentary reporting, political theory and activism. Since 24/7 news cycles travel fast and modern crises cross borders and are reported across the globe more swiftly than in previous centuries, this volume includes intercultural encounters, various forms of hybridity, and postcolonial tragic representations. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this volume, 8 lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the kaleidoscopically shifting dramatic forms, performance contexts, and social implications of tragedy throughout the period and across geographic, political, and social references. They attend not only to the familiar cultural lenses of English and mainstream Continental dramas but also to less familiar European exempla from Croatia and Hungary. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

The period covered by this volume in the Cultural History of Tragedy set is bookended by two shockingly similar historical events: the beheading of a king, Charles I of England in 1649 and Louis XIV of France in 1793. The period between these two dates saw enormous political, social and economic changes that altered European society's cultural life. Tragedy, which had dominated the European stage at the beginning of this period, gradually saw itself replaced by new literary forms, culminating in the gradual decline of theatrical tragedy from the heights it had reached in the 1660s. The dominance of France's military and cultural prestige during this period is reflected in the important, almost exclusive, space dedicated in this volume to the French stage. This book covers the tragedies of France's two greatest playwrights - Pierre Corneille (1606-84) and Jean Racine (1639-99) - which would dominate not only the French stage but, through translations and adaptations, became the model of tragic theater across Europe, finding imitators in England (Dryden), Italy (Alfieri) and as far afield as Russia. This dominance continued well into the 18th century with the triumph of Voltaire's tragedies. This volume also examines how the writings of Diderot and Lessing changed the direction of theatre and how after the Revolution, in the writings of Goethe, Shiller, Hegel, tragedy and the tragic were reimagined and became the sign of European modernity. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

This volume traces a path across the metamorphoses of tragedy and the tragic in Western cultures during the bourgeois age of nations, revolutions, and empires, roughly delimited by the French Revolution and the First World War. Its starting point is the recognition that tragedy did not die with Romanticism, as George Steiner famously argued over half a century ago, but rather mutated and dispersed, converging into a variety of unstable, productive forms both on the stage and off. In turn, the tragic as a concept and mode transformed itself under the pressure of multiple social, historical and political-ideological phenomena. This volume therefore deploys a narrative centred on hybridization extending across media, genres, demographics, faiths both religious and secular, and national boundaries. The essays also tell a story of how tragedy and the tragic offered multiple means of capturing the increasingly fragmented perception of reality and history that emerged in the 19th century. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this volume, 8 lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the kaleidoscopically shifting dramatic forms, performance contexts, and social implications of tragedy throughout the period and across geographic, political, and social references. They attend not only to the familiar cultural lenses of English and mainstream Continental dramas but also to less familiar European exempla from Croatia and Hungary. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this book leading scholars come together to provide a comprehensive, wide-ranging overview of tragedy in theatre and other media from 1920 to the present. The 20th century is often considered to have witnessed the death of tragedy as a theatrical genre, but it was marked by many tragic events and historical catastrophes, from two world wars and genocide to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the anticipation and onset of climate change. The authors in this volume wrestle with this paradox and consider the degree to which the definitions, forms and media of tragedy were transformed in the modern period and how far the tragic tradition-updated in performance-still spoke to 20th- and 21st-century challenges. While theater remains the primary focus of investigation in this strikingly illustrated book, the essays also cover tragic representation-often re-mediated, fragmented and provocatively questioned-in film, art and installation, photography, fiction and creative non-fiction, documentary reporting, political theory and activism. Since 24/7 news cycles travel fast and modern crises cross borders and are reported across the globe more swiftly than in previous centuries, this volume includes intercultural encounters, various forms of hybridity, and postcolonial tragic representations. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

In this volume, tragedy in antiquity is examined synoptically, from its misty origins in archaic Greece, through its central position in the civic life of ancient Athens and its performances across the Greek-speaking world, to its new and very different instantiations in Republican and Imperial Roman contexts. Lively, original essays by eminent scholars trace the shifting dramatic forms, performance environments, and social meanings of tragedy as it was repeatedly reinvented. Tragedy was consistently seen as the most serious of all dramatic genres; these essays trace a sequence of different visions of what the most serious kind of dramatic story might be, and the most appropriate ways of telling those stories on stage. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual, and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

For the first time, a group of distinguished authors come together to provide an authoritative exploration of the cultural history of tragedy in the Middle Ages. Reports of the so-called death of medieval tragedy, they argue, have been greatly exaggerated; and, for the Middle Ages, the stakes couldn't be higher. Eight essays offer a blueprint for future study as they take up the extensive but much-neglected medieval engagement with tragic genres, modes, and performances from the vantage points of gender, politics, theology, history, social theory, anthropology, philosophy, economics, and media studies. The result? A recuperated medieval tragedy that is as much a branch of literature as it is of theology, politics, law, or ethics and which, at long last, rejoins the millennium-long conversation about one of the world's most enduring art forms. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: forms and media; sites of performance and circulation; communities of production and consumption; philosophy and social theory; religion, ritual and myth; politics of city and nation; society and family, and gender and sexuality.

How have ideas of the tragic influenced Western culture? How has tragedy been shaped by its social and cultural conditions? In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by 55 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. Extending far beyond the established aesthetic tradition, the volumes describe the forms tragedy takes to represent human conflict and suffering, and how it engages with matters of philosophy, society, politics, religion and gender. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The six volumes cover: 1. – Antiquity (500 BCE - 1000 AD); 2. – Middle Ages (1000 - 1400); 3. – Early Modern Age (1400 - 1650); 4. – Age of Enlightenment (1650 - 1800); 5. – Age of Empire (1800 - 1920); 6. – Modern Age (1920 - present). Themes (and chapter titles) are: Forms and Media; Sites of Performance and Circulation; Communities of Production and Consumption; Philosophy and Social Theory; Religion, Ritual and Myth; Politics of City and Nation; Society and Family; and Gender and Sexuality. The page extent is approximately 1,824pp with c. 200 illustrations. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with Notes, Bibliography and an Index. The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Tragedy is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available as hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a tangible reference for their shelves or as part of a fully-searchable digital library. The digital product is available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access via www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com. Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available in print or digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Long before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal. Gathering together medical texts, herbals, and how-to books, as well as scientific, religious, philosophical, and poetic works dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, the anthology explores both mainstream and unconventional thinking about the natural world. Its seven parts focus on philosophy and science; plants; animals; weather and climate; ways of inhabiting the land; gardens and gardening; and European encounters with the wider world. Each section and each of the book's selections is prefaced with a helpful introduction by volume editor Rebecca Bushnell that weaves connections among these compelling pieces of the past. The early writers collected here wrote with extraordinary openness about ways of coexisting with the nonhuman forces that shaped them, Bushnell demonstrates, even as they sought to control and exploit their environment. Taken as a whole, The Marvels of the World reveals how many of these early writers cared as much about the natural world as we do today.

This book explores how classical and Shakespearean tragedy has shaped the temporality of crisis on the stage and in time-travel films and videogames. In turn, it uncovers how performance and new media can challenge common assumptions about tragic causality and fate. Traditional tragedies may present us with a present when a calamity is staged, a decisive moment in which everything changes. However, modern performance, adaptation and new media can question the premises of that kind of present crisis and its fatality. By offering replays or alternative endings, experimental theatre, adaptation, time travel films and videogames reinvent the tragic experience of irreversible present time. This book offers the reader a fresh understanding of tragic character and agency through these new media's exposure of the genre's deep structure.

Games and Theatre in Shakespeare's England brings together theories of play and game with theatre and performance to produce new understandings of the history and design of early modern English drama. Through literary analysis and embodied practice, an international team of distinguished scholars examines a wide range of games-from dicing to bowling to role-playing to videogames-to uncover their fascinating ramifications for the stage in Shakespeare's era and our own. Foregrounding ludic elements challenges the traditional view of drama as principally mimesis, or imitation, revealing stageplays to be improvisational experiments and participatory explorations into the motive, means, and value of recreation. Delving into both canonical masterpieces and hidden gems, this innovative volume stakes a claim for play as the crucial link between games and early modern theatre, and for the early modern theatre as a critical site for unraveling the continued cultural significance and performative efficacy of gameplay today.

Long before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. With its peerless selection of ninety-eight original sources concerned with the natural world and humankind's place within it, The Marvels of the World offers a corrective to the still-prevalent tendency to dismiss premodern attitudes toward nature as simple or univocal. Gathering together medical texts, herbals, and how-to books, as well as scientific, religious, philosophical, and poetic works dating from antiquity to the dawn of the Enlightenment, the anthology explores both mainstream and unconventional thinking about the natural world. Its seven parts focus on philosophy and science; plants; animals; weather and climate; ways of inhabiting the land; gardens and gardening; and European encounters with the wider world. Each section and each of the book's selections is prefaced with a helpful introduction by volume editor Rebecca Bushnell that weaves connections among these compelling pieces of the past. The early writers collected here wrote with extraordinary openness about ways of coexisting with the nonhuman forces that shaped them, Bushnell demonstrates, even as they sought to control and exploit their environment. Taken as a whole, The Marvels of the World reveals how many of these early writers cared as much about the natural world as we do today.

How have ideas of the tragic influenced Western culture? How has tragedy been shaped by its social and cultural conditions? In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by 55 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. Extending far beyond the established aesthetic tradition, the volumes describe the forms tragedy takes to represent human conflict and suffering, and how it engages with matters of philosophy, society, politics, religion and gender. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. The six volumes cover: 1. - Antiquity (500 BCE - 1000 AD); 2. - Middle Ages (1000 - 1400); 3. - Early Modern Age (1400 - 1650); 4. - Age of Enlightenment (1650 - 1800); 5. - Age of Empire (1800 - 1920); 6. - Modern Age (1920 - present). Themes (and chapter titles) are: Forms and Media; Sites of Performance and Circulation; Communities of Production and Consumption; Philosophy and Social Theory; Religion, Ritual and Myth; Politics of City and Nation; Society and Family; and Gender and Sexuality. The page extent is approximately 1,824pp with c. 200 illustrations. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with Notes, Bibliography and an Index. The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Tragedy is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available as hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a tangible reference for their shelves or as part of a fully-searchable digital library. The digital product is available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access via www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com. Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available in print or digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

The purpose of this book is to honor the scholarly legacy of Charles R. Forker with a series of essays that address the problem of literary influence in original ways and from a variety of perspectives. The emphasis throughout is on the sort of careful, exhaustive, evidence-based scholarship to which Forker dedicated his entire professional life. Although wide-ranging and various by design, the essays in this book never lose sight of three discrete yet overlapping areas of literary inquiry that create a unity of perspective amid the diversity of approaches: 1) the formation of play texts, textual analysis, and editorial practice; 2) performance history and the material playing conditions from Shakespeare's time to the present, including film as well as stage representations; and 3) the world, both cultural and literary, in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries worked and to which they bequeathed an artistic legacy that continues to be re-interpreted and re-defined by a whole new set of cultural and literary pressures. Eschewing any single, predetermined ideological perspective, the essays in this book call our attention to how the simplest questions or observations can open up provocative and unexpected scholarly vistas. In so doing, they invite us into a subtly re-configured world of literary influence that draws us into new, often unexpected, ways of seeing and understanding the familiar.