1st Edition
Our Scene is London Ben Jonson's City and the Space of the Author
Biography
James Mardock is Associate Professor of English and Crowley Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno, US.
"From the accession of James I to 1616, argues Mardock, Jonson (1573-1637) pursued a project that had as much to do with the physical and social spaces of London as with his plays and their collection into his famous Folio. He shows how the playwright exerted much control over the stages and theaters where his plays were performed, and dealt extensively in his plays with how Londoners conceived their city, their experience of drama and its relation to their everyday lives, and how they understood space and the lived environment generally. Parts of the study served as his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Wisconsin, and parts have been delivered as talks." -- Book News Inc., August 2008
"Our Scene is London offers a thoughtful contribution to Jonsonian criticism, as well as to studies of authorship and the representation of space... A promising treatment of a topic that deserves more exploration." -- Suzanne Penuel, South Atlantic Review
