Issues of death : mortality and identity in English Renaissance tragedy
"Death, like most experiences that we think of as 'natural', is a product of the human imagination: all animals die, but only human beings suffer Death; and what they suffer is shaped by their own time and culture. Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part 1 explore Death as a trope of apocalypse - a moment of un-veiling or dis-covery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful 'openings' enacted in the new theatres of anatomy." "In Part 2, Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending." "Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funeral arts."--Jacket
Aufsatzsammlung
xii, 404 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
9780198183860, 0198183860
37106725
1. 'Peremptory nullification': Tragedy and Macabre Art
2. The Stage of Death: Tragedy and Anatomy
3. Opening the Moor: Death and Discovery in Othello
4. 'Hidden malady': Death, Discovery, and Indistinction in The Changeling
5. Anxieties of Ending
6. 'To know my stops': Hamlet and Narrative Abruption
7. Accommodating the Dead: Hamlet and the Ends of Revenge
8. 'Death's triumphal chariot': Tragedy and Funeral
9. Finis coronat opus: The Monumental Ending of Anthony and Cleopatra
10. 'Fame's best friend': The Endings of The Duchess of Malfi
11. 'Great arts best write themselves in their own stories': Ending The Broken Heart
Appendix. The Plague and the Dance of Death
Author is professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand