Pretty creatures : children and fiction in the English Renaissance / Michael Witmore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Witmore, Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English literature.

Children in literature.

Theater and children--England--History--16th century.

Theater and children.

Theater and children--England--History--17th century.

Children--England--History--16th century.

Children.

Children--England--History--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (245 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Children had surprisingly central roles in many of the public performances of the English Renaissance, whether in entertainments-civic pageants, children's theaters, Shakespearean drama-or in more grim religious and legal settings, as when children were "possessed by demons" or testified as witnesses in witchcraft trials. Taken together, such spectacles made repeated connections between child performers as children and the mimetic powers of fiction in general. In Pretty Creatures, Michael Witmore examines the ways in which children, with their proverbial capacity for spontaneous imitation and their imaginative absorption, came to exemplify the virtues and powers of fiction during this era.As much concerned with Renaissance poetics as with children's roles in public spectacles of the period, Pretty Creatures attempts to bring the antics of children-and the rich commentary these antics provoked-into the mainstream of Renaissance studies, performance studies, and studies of reformation culture in England. As such, it represents an alternative history of the concept of mimesis in the period, one that is built from the ground up through reflections on the actual performances of what was arguably nature's greatest mimic: the child.

Contents:

Ut pueritas poesis : the child and fiction in the English Renaissance

Animated children in Elizabeth's coronation pageant of 1559

Phatic metadrama and the touch of irony in English children's theater

Mamillius, The winter's tale, and the impetus of fiction

The lies children tell : counterfeiting victims and witnesses in early modern English witchcraft trials and possessions.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8014-6355-6

OCLC:

732957082