Early modern spectatorship : interpreting English culture, 1500-1780 / edited by Ronald Huebert and David McNeil.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Huebert, Ronald, editor.

McNeil, David, 1955- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Performing arts--Audiences--England--History.

Performing arts.

Arts audiences--England--History.

Arts audiences.

England--Civilization.

England.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (429 pages)

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2019]

Summary:

What did it mean to be a spectator during the lifetime of Shakespeare or of Aphra Behn? In Early Modern Spectatorship contributors use the idea of spectatorship to reinterpret canonical early modern texts and bring visibility to relatively unknown works. While many early modern spectacles were designed to influence those who watched, the very presence of spectators and their behaviour could alter the conduct and the meaning of the event itself. In the case of public executions, for example, audiences could both observe and be observed by the executioner and the condemned. Drawing on work in the digital humanities and theories of cultural spectacle, these essays discuss subjects as various as the death of Desdemona in Othello, John Donne's religious orientation, Ned Ward's descriptions of London, and Louis Laguerre's murals painted for the residences of English aristocrats. A lucid exploration of subtle questions, Early Modern Spectatorship identifies, imagines, and describes the spectator's experience in early modern culture.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Bibliographical Note

Preface

Early Modern Spectatorship: An Overview

Making Spectacles: Spectatorship and Authority on the Early Modern Stage

“Shame's pure blush”: Shakespeare and the Ethics of Spectatorship

Spectatorship and Repression in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

“Most grateful deceptions of the sight”: Optical Technologies in Restoration England

Dying in Earnest: Public Executions and Their Audiences

Looking at John Donne Looking at God

Sidney Visualized: Thomas Lant's Sequitur celebritas (1588) and the Funeral Construction of an English National Hero

“Watching the Watchers”: The Spectatorship Game in Ned Ward's The London Spy

Prospect Views: Landscapes, Knowledge, and Political Spectatorship in the Eighteenth Century

A Case Study on Spectatorship and the Visual Arts: Democritus and Heraclitus

Spectacle and the Chronotope of Progress in William Hogarth's London

Mural Painting and Spectatorship in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain

Illustrations

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780773557925

077355792X

9780773557918

0773557911

OCLC:

1085895940