Title Representing the plague in early modern England / edited by Rebecca Totaro and Ernest B. Gilman

Published New York : Routledge, 2011

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Description 1 online resource (vi, 260 pages) : illustrations Series Routledge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ; 14 Routledge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ; 14. Contents Making the plague serve form and function, 1563-1666. Writing the plague in English prose satire / William Kerwin; Plague space and played space in urban drama, 1604 / Kelly J. Stage; Physical and spiritual illness: narrative appropriations of the Bills of mortality / Erin Sullivan -- Governing bodies in plague-time. Contagious figurations: plague and the impenetrable nation after the death of Elizabeth / Richelle Munkhoff; "Thinking to pass unknown": Measure for measure, the plague, and the accession of James I / James D. Mardock -- Performances, playhouses, and the sites of re-creation. "Sweet recreation barred": the case for playgoing in plague-time / Nichole DeWall; Shakespeare's dual lexicons of plague: infections in speech and space / Paula S. Berggren; "A plague on both your houses": sites of comfort and terror in early modern drama / Barbara H. Traister -- Contemporary turns. Plague in A midsummer night's dream: a Girardian reading of Bottom and Hippolyta / Matthew Thiele; Dekker's and Middleton's plague pamphlets as environmental literature / Charles Whitney Summary From the publisher. This collection offers readers a timely encounter with the historical experience of people adapting to a pandemic emergency and the corresponding narrative representation of that crisis, as early modern writers transformed the plague into literature. The essays examine the impact of the plague on health, politics, and religion as well as on the plays, prose fiction, and plague bills that stand as witnesses to the experience of a society devastated by contagious disease. Readers will find physicians and moralists wrestling with the mysteries of the disease; erotic escapades staged in plague-time plays; the poignant prose works of William Bullein and Thomas Dekker; the bodies of monarchs who sought to protect themselves from plague; the chameleon-like nature of the plague as literal disease and as metaphor; and future strains of plague, literary and otherwise, which we may face in the globally-minded, technology-dependent, and ecologically-awakened twenty-first century. The bubonic plague compelled change in all aspects of lived experience in Early Modern England, but at the same time, it opened space for writers to explore new ideas and new literary forms -- not all of them somber or horrifying and some of them downright hilarious. By representing the plague for their audiences, these writers made an epidemic calamity intelligible: for them, the dreaded disease could signify despair but also hope, bewilderment but also a divine plan, quarantine but also liberty, death but also new life Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes English Print version record Subject English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism Plague in literature. Diseases and literature -- England -- History -- 17th century Diseases and literature -- England -- History -- 16th century Plague -- England -- History Diseases in literature. Medicine in literature. Drama. Medicine -- History -- 17th century. Medicine in Literature Drama Plague -- history History, 16th Century History, 17th Century plays (performing arts compositions) drama (literary genre) LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Medicine in literature Medicine Drama Diseases and literature Diseases in literature English literature -- Early modern Plague Plague in literature Englisch Literatur Pest Motiv Pest -- Motiv -- Englische Literatur. Englische Literatur -- Motiv -- Pest. Pest -- Grossbritannien -- Geschichte 16. Jh. Pest -- Grossbritannien -- Geschichte 17. Jh. Literatur. Englisch. Motiv. Pest. United Kingdom England Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book Author Totaro, Rebecca Carol Noel, 1968- Gilman, Ernest B., 1946- LC no. 2009049213 ISBN 9780203850565 0203850564 9781136963247 1136963243 9781136963193 1136963197 9781136963230 1136963235 9780415634182 0415634180 1282781839 9781282781832 9786612781834 6612781831

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