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The Absence of America: The London Stage, 1576-1642 (Early Modern Literary Geographies)
Gavin Hollis
€ 156.91
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Description for The Absence of America: The London Stage, 1576-1642 (Early Modern Literary Geographies)
Hardcover. The Absence of America: the London Stage 1576-1642 looks at London theater at the time of Shakespeare and how it represented the New World, considering whether early modern drama was anti-American, as some contemporaries suggested. Num Pages: 288 pages, 10 black-and-white halftones. BIC Classification: 1DBKESL; 2AB; 3JB; 3JD; AN; DSBD; DSG. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly. Dimension: 149 x 223 x 25. Weight in Grams: 486.
The Absence of America: the London Stage 1576â1642 examines why early modern drama's response to English settlement in the New World was muted, even though the so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration: no play is set in the Americas; few plays treat colonization as central to the plot; a handful features Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise). However, advocates of colonialism in the seventeenth century denounced playing companies as enemies on a par with the Pope and the Devil. Instead of writing off these accusers as paranoid cranks, this book takes as its starting point the possibility that they were astute playgoers. By so doing we can begin to see the emergence of a "picture of America," and of the Virginia colony in particular, across a number of plays performed for London audiences: Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, The Staple of News, and his collaboration with Marston and Chapman, Eastward Ho!; Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso; Massinger's The City Madam; Massinger and Fletcher's The Sea Voyage; Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl; Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Fletcher and Shakespeare's Henry VIII. We can glean the significance of this picture, not only for the troubled Virginia Company, but also for London theater audiences. And we can see that the picture that was beginning to form was, as the anti-theatricalists surmised, often slanderous, condemnatory, and, as it were, anti-American.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Condition
New
Series
Early Modern Literary Geographies
Number of Pages
276
Place of Publication
Oxford, United Kingdom
ISBN
9780198734321
SKU
V9780198734321
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-14
About Gavin Hollis
Gavin Hollis received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is Assistant Professor at Hunter College CUNY specializing in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama. Originally from Great Britain, he also holds degrees from Cambridge University and the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.
Reviews for The Absence of America: The London Stage, 1576-1642 (Early Modern Literary Geographies)
Gavin Hollis's interrogation of the presence of America on the London stage is deeply engaging, drawing on a large body of early modern theatre and employing several lenses, including gender, sexuality and race, to develop his convincing arguments ... It contains many beautiful illustrations, including reproductions of Theodor de Bry and Inigo Jones, and its structure of clearly signposted and digestible parts ensures that this text - full of detail and vivid imagery - is easily navigable. Hollis has made a perceptive new departure on a topic that has in recent years, as he acknowledges, stagnated.
Misha Ewen, History
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism. ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference.
Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly
Hollis's study is to be recommended and makes a significant intervention in the field. It includes careful close readings of sometimes neglected dramatic writing and presents an insightful overview of the interplay between the early modern theatre and the social and economic concerns of the period.
Andrew J. Power, Modern Language Review
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference. In the table of contents alone we find a more eclectic range of dramatic texts than is ordinary for a monograph in this field.
Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly
The Absence of America stands out as one of the past year's most critically sophisticated studies ... the series will quickly establish itself as the home of our field's most innovative scholarship on issues of space, place, and environment.
Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
Misha Ewen, History
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism. ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference.
Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly
Hollis's study is to be recommended and makes a significant intervention in the field. It includes careful close readings of sometimes neglected dramatic writing and presents an insightful overview of the interplay between the early modern theatre and the social and economic concerns of the period.
Andrew J. Power, Modern Language Review
This is a book that has been waiting to be written. Deeply researched and clearly organized, it draws surprising connections between English antitheatricalism and New World colonialism, and discovers in early modern dramatic literature a sharp critique of incipient westward imperialism ... Hollis's book, then, does much to reveal the presence of America on the early modern English stage. What I appreciated most about this book was its breadth of reference. In the table of contents alone we find a more eclectic range of dramatic texts than is ordinary for a monograph in this field.
Jeremy Lopez, Renaissance Quarterly
The Absence of America stands out as one of the past year's most critically sophisticated studies ... the series will quickly establish itself as the home of our field's most innovative scholarship on issues of space, place, and environment.
Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900