1st Edition
Radical Comedy in Early Modern England Contexts, Cultures, Performances
By Rick Bowers
Copyright 2008
132 Pages
by
Routledge
132 Pages
by
Routledge
132 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Drawing on the generic and mythic strength of comedy and the theories of Bakhtin, Bergson, and Hobbes, this book identifies the radical nature of early modern English comedy. The satirical comedic actions that shape the "Shepherds' Play," Thomas Dekker's pamphlets, and the comic dramas of Marston, Middleton, and Jonson are all driven, Bowers points out, by an ability to criticize authority, assert... Read more
Chapter 1 Introduction: Comic Performance; Chapter 2 Enter the Comic Hero: The Performance of Mak in the Second Shepherds’ Play; Chapter 3 Wrestling with Comic Villainy: Barabas and other “Heels” in The Jew of Malta; Chapter 4 Grinning and Bearing it: A Plague of Storytelling in The Wonderfull Yeare (1603); Chapter 5 Humor in High (and low) Places: Toilet Tales and The Metamorphosis of Ajax; Chapter 6 Marston’s Absurd Theater: The Antonio Plays; Chapter 7 Sex, Lies, Carnival, and Class: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside; Chapter 8 “Of What Bigness? / Huge”: Ben Jonson’s Supersized Comedy;
Biography
Rick Bowers is a Professor of English in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada.
'Radical Comedy in Early Modern England considers work by Jonson and Marston as well as the Wakefield Master, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Harington and Thomas Middleton, and is perhaps best described as a celebratory discussion of some memorable texts and their contexts.' English Studies
