Botanical culture and popular belief in Shakespeare's England / Bonnie Lander Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lander, Bonnie, 1977- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Criticism and interpretation.

Shakespeare, William.

Authors and readers--History.

Authors and readers.

Literature and society--England--History--16th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--England--History--17th century.

Botany in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 196 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Summary:

The Shakespearean stage offered London playgoers a glimpse of the illiterate and rural plant cultures rapidly disappearing from their increasingly urban and sophisticated lives. The same cultures also circulated in popular texts offstage: bawdy tree ballads, botanical tales, almanacs and accounts of kitchen physic. Here Bonnie Lander Johnson argues that, while Shakespeare's plants offered audiences a nostalgic vision of childhood, domestic education and rural pastimes, this was in fact done with an ironic gesture that claimed for illiterate culture an intellectual relevance ignored by the learned and largely Protestant realm of print. Addressing a long-standing imbalance in early modern scholarship, she reveals how Shakespeare's plays - and the popular, low botanical beliefs they represent - engaged with questions usually deemed high, literate and elite: theological and liturgical controversies, the politics of state, England's role in Elizabethan naval conflict and the increasingly learned realm of medical authority.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jan 2025).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009396516

100939651X

9781009396530

1009396536

9781009396509

1009396501