Untimely deaths in Renaissance drama : biography, history, catastrophe /

Untimely deaths in Renaissance drama : biography, history, catastrophe /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Griffin, Andrew, 1978- author.
Imprint:	Toronto ; Buffalo ; London : University of Toronto Press, [2019]
Description:	ix, 197 pages ; 24 cm
Language:	English
Subject:	English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism. English drama -- 17th century -- History and criticism. History in literature. Death in literature. Death in literature. English drama. English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan. History in literature. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11951646

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781487503482 1487503482
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:	"In the decades before history was institutionalized as a scholarly discipline, historical writing was practiced by poets, record keepers, lawyers, sermonizers, mythologers, and philosophers. In the welter of competing forms of historical thought, early modern drama often operated as a site in which claims about the nature of historical change could be treated in their frequently conflicting variety. To explore this field of competing forms of historical explanation, Untimely Death in Renaissance Drama focuses on the problem of narrative abruption in a selection of historically-minded early modern plays as they rely on various strategies to make sense of biography and fatality. Arguing that narrative forms fail in the face of untimely death, Andrew Griffin shows that the disruption appears as matter of trauma, making the untimely death both a point of narrative conflict and a social problem. Exploring the formula that early modern dramatists used to make sense of lives and deaths, this book draws on the wider context of the period's culture of history writing."--

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Biography, History, Catastrophe
1. Richard II, Problem Tragedy
2. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and the Histories of London
3. Epic Tragedies in Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage
4. Military Catastrophe and Elegiac History in The Atheist's Tragedy
Conclusion: "Making Good the Conclusion": Ben Jonson and Bathetic Overliving
Notes
Works Cited
Index