Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear

by Goodland,Katharine

• ISBN13: 9780754651017
• ISBN10: 0754651010
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-08-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Grieving women in early modern English drama, this study argues, recall not only those of Classical tragedy, but also, and more significantly, the lamenting women of medieval English drama, especially the Virgin Mary. Looking at the plays of Shakespeare, Kyd, and Webster, this book presents a new perspective on early modern drama grounded upon three original interrelated points. First, it explores how the motif of the mourning woman on the early modern stage embodies the cultural trauma of the Reformation in England. Second, the author here brings to light the extent to which the figures of early modern drama recall those of the recent medieval past. Finally, Goodland addresses how these representations embody actual mourning practices that were viewed as increasingly disturbing after the Reformation.Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama synthesizes and is relevant to several areas of recent scholarly interest, including the performance of gender, the history of emotion, studies of death and mourning, and the cultural trauma of the Reformation.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vi
Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(30)
Part One: Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval English Drama	31	(70)
Resistant Female Grief in the Lazarus Plays	37	(18)
Maternal Mourning and Tragedy in the Nativity and Passion Plays	55	(22)
Residual Lament in the Resurrection Plays	77	(24)
Part Two: Deranging Female Lament in Renaissance Tragedy	101	(120)
Constance and the Claims of Passion	119	(16)
Mourning and Communal Memory in Shakespeare's Richard III	135	(20)
Monstrous Mourning Women in Kyd, Shakespeare, and Webster	155	(16)
The Gendered Poetics of Tragedy in Shakespeare's Hamlet	171	(30)
Inverting the Pieta in Shakespeare's King Lear	201	(20)
Bibliography	221	(20)
Index	241