Massacres in early modern drama / Georgina Lucas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lucas, Georgina, author.

Series:

Revels plays companion library

The Revels plays companion library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--Themes, motives.

English drama.

Massacres in literature.

Saint Bartholomew's Day, Massacre of, France, 1572.

English drama--Themes, motives.

Physical Description:

xvii, 278 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Massacres in Early Modern Drama analyses the dynamically ambivalent meanings constructed by the language and action of massacre on the early modern stage. Informed by theories drawn from massacre studies, the book challenges orthodoxies about senseless violence, illuminates archaic forms of massacre, and attests to their brutally diverse stage representations. Massacres scarred the early modern period. Its wars-- civil, religious, and colonial-- were each impelled, attended, or characterized by massacres. This violence intersected with some of the gravest political questions of the age. What is (who counts as) a human? What makes (and unmakes) a king? What makes (and breaks) a state? Do wars have rules, and to whom do they (or do they not) apply? Massacres in Early Modern Drama explores these questions by analyzing the ways in which massacres expose the contingency of three different concepts: humanness, statehood, and war. Anchored by the contention that the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris in 1572 was instrumental to early modern understandings of massacre, the book uses this atrocity, and its most famous dramatic depiction-- Christopher Marlowe's The Massacre at Paris-- as a hook to explore larger concerns about massacre in plays by Robert Greene, George Chapman, John Fletcher, and William Shakespeare. In doing so, this valuable study considers how early modern drama forms part of a continual culture process of trying to piece together the contentious and traumatic phenomenon of massacre.

Contents:

Introduction: "What order will you set down for the massacre?"

Part I: The language of massacre. The meaning of massacre : etymology and semantics

The rhetoric of massacre : witnessing atrocity

Part II: Massacre and the State. Massacre from above : the foundation and maintenance of states

Massacre from below : usurpation and assassination

Part III: Massacre and warfare. Massacre from without : genocide and sack

Massacre from within : war crimes and civil war

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781526147318

1526147319

OCLC:

1557937013

Publisher Number:

CIPO000367098