The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton

by Taylor, Gary; Henley, Trish Thomas

• ISBN13: 9780198703488
• ISBN10: 0198703481
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-11-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The 37 essays in The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton reinterpret the English Renaissance through the lens of one of its most original, and least understood, geniuses. Shakespeare's younger contemporary and collaborator, Middleton wrote modern comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, history plays, masques, pageants, pamphlets, and poetry. The largest collection of new Middleton criticism ever assembled, this ambitious Handbook provides a comprehensive, in-depth, cutting-edge reaction to OUP's Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, winner of the 2009 MLA prize for editing, the first complete scholarly text of his voluminous and diverse oeuvre. The Handbook brings together an international, cross-generational team of experts to discuss all these genres through an equally diverse range of critical approaches, from feminism to stylistics, ecocriticism to performance studies, Aristotle to Zizek. Reinterpretations of canonical plays such as The Changeling, Women Beware Women, The Roaring Girl, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside mingle with explorations of neglected or recently-identified works. Middleton's dramatic use of dance, music, and clothing, Middletonian adaptation, his relationships to the classical world and to continental Europe, his fascinating explorations of sexuality and religion, all receive attention. The collection also provides new essays on modern and postmodern reactions to Middleton, including recent Middleton revivals and films, and living artists' responses to his work-responses that range from the actresses who play Middleton's women to writers in various genres who have been inspired by his artistry. The Handbook establishes an authoritative foundation for the rapidly-expanding growth of interest in this extraordinarily protean, funny, moving, disturbing, and modern writer.

Author Biography

Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, founder of the History of Text Technologies program there, general editor (with Stanley Wells) of the Oxford edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works, and general editor (with John Lavagnino) of the Oxford edition of Middleton's Collected Works.


Trish Thomas Henley is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati. She has published in Exemplaria, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, and Theatre Journal, and is currently finishing a book manuscript, Velvet Women Within: The Boy Actor and the Prostitute on the Early English Stage.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Unintroduction: Middletonian Dissensus, Gary Taylor and Trish Thomas Henley
1. Thomas Middleton's Shelf Life, Julian Yates
2. Playing with Space: Making a Public in Middleton's Theatre, Paul Yachnin
3. History . Plays . Genre . Games, Gary Taylor
4. Middleton's Collaborators in Music and Song, Tiffany Stern
5. Passionate Tunes for Amorous Poems: Middleton's Way with Music, Raphael Seligmann
6. Playing with Boys on Middleton's Stage-and Ours, Carol Chillington Rutter
7. Middleton's Historical Imagination, Thomas Roebuck
8. Middleton and Dance, Barbara Ravelhofer
9. The Ecology of Passions in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside and The Changeling , Gail Kern Paster
10. Middleton and Caroline Theatre, Lucy Munro
11. 'Time's comic sparks': the Dramaturgy of A Mad World My Masters and Timon of Athens, Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith
12. 'My cloak's a stranger; he was made but yesterday': Clothing, Language, and the Construction of Theatre in Middleton, Eleanor Lowe
13. 'Old Dad dead?' The Rise of the Neo-Noir 'Heritage' Film, Or, Middleton with a View, Courtney Lehmann
14. 'Nimble in damnation, quick in tune': Vice and The Revenger's Tragedy, Douglas Lanier
15. Middletonian Stylistics, Jonathan Hope
16. Tragicomic Men, Trish Thomas Henley
17. Middleton and Usury, David Hawkes
18. Middleton, Plautus, and the Ethics of Comedy, Richard F. Hardin
19. 'More lies than true tales': Skepticism in Middleton's Mock Almanacs, Meredith Molly Hand
20. Staging Muteness in Middleton, Heidi Brayman Hackel
21. Middleton's Language Machine, Stephen Guy-Bray
22. Middleton and the Theatre of Emergency, David Glimp
23. Middleton and the Culture of Courtesy, Indira Ghose
24. Playwright to Playwright: The Changeling, Gabriel Gbadamosi
25. Middleton and Spain, Barbara Fuchs
26. Demonic Middleton, Ewan Fernie
27. Middleton and Mimetic Desire, Lars Engle
28. Thomas Middleton, William Shakespeare, and the Masculine Grotesque, Celia R. Daileader
29. Middleton as Poet, Joseph Campana
30. The Emotions of Tragedy: Middleton or Shakespeare?, Paul Budra
31. Giving Revenger's Its Due, Regina Buccola
32. Middleton's Imagination, Douglas Bruster
33. Middleton and the Continent, Karen Britland
34. 'It's a whole different sex!': Women Performing Middleton on the Modern Stage, Terri Bourus
35. Middleton and Ecological Change, Bruce Boehrer
36. 'The Lure of a Taffeta Cloak': Middleton's Sartorial Seduction in Your Five Gallants, Mary Bly
Bibliography
Index