Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy

In Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy

Luis-Martínez, Zenón

Paperback

Literary CriticismTheater HistoryPlays

ISBN10: 904200844X
ISBN13: 9789042008441
Publisher: Brill
Published: Jan 1 2002
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.94
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Departing from earlier studies which regarded incest as a literary topos or dramatic metaphor foregrounding political, social, or legal issues, Words and Deeds: The Spectacle of Incest in English Renaissance Tragedy argues that the presence of incest on the Renaissance stage is a strategy for the enactment of the spectator's tragic experience. Incest is explored neither as a sin nor as a crime, but as an unspeakable experience filtered through dramatic words and deeds. The incitement of desire, visual pleasure, and unconscious fantasy, as well as traumatic rejection, pain, and horror, are all aspects of this paradoxical and uncanny experience. Aristotelian theory of tragedy, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Michel Foucault's notions of the deployment of sexuality and alliance, concur in the analysis of plays where incest is a central or a secondary motif - Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi - and others where incest is an effect of language and mise-en-scène - Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc, Shakespeare's King Lear. The variety of topics and the combination of critical perspectives makes In Words and Deeds an attractive book for students and teachers of Renaissance drama, as well as for those with a special interest in psychoanalytic and other new theoretical approaches to the literary text.

Also from

Luis-Martínez, Zenón

View All

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All