Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy: Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage

Shakespeare, Politics, and Italy: Intertextuality on the Jacobean Stage
ISBN-10
140947531X
ISBN-13
9781409475316
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
264
Language
English
Published
2013-04-28
Publisher
Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Author
Mr Michael J Redmond

Description

The use of Italian culture in the Jacobean theatre was never an isolated gesture. In considering the ideological repercussions of references to Italy in prominent works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Michael J. Redmond argues that early modern intertextuality was a dynamic process of allusion, quotation, and revision. Beyond any individual narrative source, Redmond foregrounds the fundamental role of Italian textual precedents in the staging of domestic anxieties about state crisis, nationalism, and court intrigue. By focusing on the self-conscious, overt rehearsal of existing texts and genres, the book offers a new approach to the intertextual strategies of early modern English political drama. The pervasive circulation of Cinquecento political theorists like Machiavelli, Castiglione, and Guicciardini combined with recurrent English representations of Italy to ensure that the negotiation with previous writing formed an integral part of the dramatic agendas of period plays.

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