Transnational Mobilities in Early Modern Theater

by Eric Nicholson, Robert Henke, Helen Ostovich

Overview

The essays in this volume investigate English, Italian, Spanish, German, Czech, and Bengali early modern theater, placing Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the theatrical contexts of western and central Europe, as well as the Indian sub-continent. Contributors explore the mobility of theatrical units, genres, performance practices, visual images, and dramatic texts across geo-linguistic borders in early modern Europe.

Combining 'distant' and 'close' reading, a systemic and structural approach identifies common theatrical units, or 'theatergrams' as departure points for specifying the particular translations of theatrical cultures across national boundaries. The essays engage both 'dramatic' approaches (e.g., genre, plot, action, and the dramatic text) and 'theatrical' perspectives (e.g., costume, the body and gender of the actor). Following recent work in 'mobility studies,' mobility is examined from both material and symbolic angles, revealing both ample transnational movement and periodic resistance to border-crossing. Four final essays attend to the practical and theoretical dimensions of theatrical translation and adaptation, and contribute to the book’s overall inquiry into the ways in which values, properties, and identities are lost, transformed, or gained in movement across geo-linguistic borders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781409468318
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	08/28/2014
Series:	Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Robert Henke is Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the author of Pastoral Transformations: Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Late Plays (1997) and Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell'Arte (2002). With M.A. Katritzky, he is the editor of European Theatre Performance Practice, 1580-1750 (Ashgate, 2014). Eric Nicholson is a Lecturer at Syracuse University in Florence, Italy, where he teaches courses on comedy and theater. In Florence and elsewhere he has directed numerous full-scale productions of plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Flaminio Scala, and others. Their previous Ashgate collection is Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater (2008).

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction, Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson. Part 1 Systems and Theatergrams: The Taming of the Shrew, Italian intertexts, and cultural mobility, Robert Henke; Resources in common: Shakespeare and Flaminio Scala, Richard Andrews; ‘Are you a comedian?’: the trunk in Twelfth Night and the intertheatrical construction of character, Melissa Walter. Part 2 The Pastoral Zone: Hymen and the gods on stage in Shakespeare's As You Like It and Italian pastoral, Susanne L. Wofford; Et in Arcadia the dirty brides, Eric Nicholson. Part 3 Performance Texts and Costumes: Dido, boy diva of Carthage: Marlowe’s Dido tragedy and the Renaissance actress, Pamela Allen Brown; Forms of fashion: material fabrics, national characteristics, and the dramaturgy of difference on the early modern English stage, Christian M. Billing. Part 4 Northern and Central European Mobilities: Shakespeare's ‘portrait of a blinking idiot’: transnational reflections, M.A. Katritzky; English comedy and central European marionette drama: a study in theater etymology, Pavel Drábek. Part 5 Translation Theory and Practice: Trade in exile, Jacques Lezra; Found and lost in translation, Alessandro Serpieri; Shakespeare's untranslatability, David Schalkwyk; Lebedeff, Kendal, Dutt: three travelers on the Indian stage, Shormishtha Panja. Epilogue: Early modern theater in motion: the example of Orpheus, Jane Tylus. Select bibliography; Index.