Shakespeare's Italy: Functions of Italian Locations in Renaissance Drama

Johnson-Haddad, Miranda; Marrapodi, Michele; Hoenselaars, A. J.; Cappuzzo, Marcello; Santucci, Lino Falzon

doi:10.2307/2902218

Cited by 14 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This meant that tropes taken from texts permeated wider social spheres. For example, the subject matter and themes of later 16th century English dramaturgy owe much to ancient Roman models [42] . The English dramatists were well versed in both classical Roman and more contemporary Italian drama and poetry, these now being part of the wider literary culture.…”

Section: The Autonomization and Purification Of Roman-classical Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Uses of Classical Literature: Deploying Literary Representations of Rome and the Romans in England between the 15th and 18th Centuries

Inglis,

Thorpe

2023

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Studies of receptions of ancient Greek and Roman literature analyze how so-called ‘classical’ texts are variously taken up and deployed by persons existing at later points in history. So far, the nature of such reception has not been conceptualized in an explicitly sociological manner. This paper proposes one way to do that, drawing upon key ideas developed by the Yale School of Cultural Sociology. This is done in order to re-narrate the ways in which ancient Roman texts were used by various interested parties in England, and later the United Kingdom, between the 15th and 18th centuries. The paper shows how Italian humanist understandings of the classicality of ancient Roman texts were taken up by English humanists, thereby purifying the overall set of such texts, rendering them seemingly context-free and adaptable to changing social circumstances. The relatively autonomous and free-floating nature of Roman literary texts defined as ‘classical’ allowed them to be taken up in different ways at different times for different purposes by different sorts of actors, especially aristocratic ones or those closely associated with aristocratic viewpoints. Texts describing republican Rome, and those depicting the transition from that political condition to the emergence of the Roman empire, were particularly appealing to English exegetes in the 17th and 18th centuries. They were deployed to make sense of the English Civil War and its aftermath, to carve out variant political identities, and to reflect upon the rise of the British Empire, which was understood to have surpassed its Roman counterpart, at the same time as it was feared that it might succumb eventually to a similar demise. The hopes and fears of English elites, as these were woven into the creation of political identities, were worked out through reflection upon and deployment of Roman texts taken to be timeless, processes that the paper models in a distinctive cultural sociological fashion.

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Section: The Autonomization and Purification Of Roman-classical Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Uses of Classical Literature: Deploying Literary Representations of Rome and the Romans in England between the 15th and 18th Centuries

Inglis,

Thorpe

2023

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“…Furthermore, the importance Shakespeare gives to individual Italian cities in his plays has become a matter of scholarly interest, with Venice and Rome understandably getting the lion's share. 4 The two cities remain pivotal even in studies dedicated to other playwrights of Shakespeare's time, or even to Elizabethan drama as a whole: when using Italy as a backdrop for their plays, early modern English playwrights 'frequently placed that nation in an explicitly international context', 5 which may explain the centrality, in contemporary criticism, of cities that still maintain a stable place in the collective consciousness.…”

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confidence: 99%

Editorial introduction: From Paradise to Padua

Petrina

2023

Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies

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This introductory section offers an overview of allusions and references to Padua in Middle English writing, dwelling on Geoffrey Chaucer's allusion to Padua and Petrarch in the Clerk's Prologue as well as on Herod the Great's reference in the Towneley medieval play, highlighting how early on in English imagination Padua became connoted as a faraway, exotic place, as well as a seat of learning. The introduction then continues by presenting the contributions that follow to this special issue on Shakespeare and Padua, and setting them in dialogue with one another.

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Claustrophobia and urban affiliation inVolponeandEpicene

Dowd

2015

The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage

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Shakespeare's Italy: Functions of Italian Locations in Renaissance Drama

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Uses of Classical Literature: Deploying Literary Representations of Rome and the Romans in England between the 15th and 18th Centuries

Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Uses of Classical Literature: Deploying Literary Representations of Rome and the Romans in England between the 15th and 18th Centuries

Editorial introduction: From Paradise to Padua

Claustrophobia and urban affiliation inVolponeandEpicene

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