Radical Comedy in Early Modern England
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A01=Rick Bowers
Act Iii
Act Iv
Antonio's Revenge
Antonio’s Revenge
Author_Rick Bowers
authority critique
Bakhtinian theory
Bartholomew Fair
Category=ATD
Category=DS
Category=DSB
chaste
Chaste Maid
Christ Child
comic
Comic Hero
comic subversion
early modern English comic performance
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fool
harington
hero
James King
john
Jonson's Comedy
Jonson’s Comedy
maid
Marston's Drama
Marston’s Drama
Middleton's City Comedy
Middleton's Comedy
Middleton's Play
middletons
Middleton’s City Comedy
Middleton’s Comedy
Middleton’s Play
Nu Shu
Plague Pamphlets
plebeian discourse
Radical Comedy
Renaissance drama analysis
Richard III
satirical literature
Secunda Pastorum
sir
Sir Giles Goosecap
Sir Walter Whorehound
Southern Hunan Province
STC.
Wild Goose Chase
wise
Wonderfull Yeare
Younger Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781138252707
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 09 Sep 2016
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Drawing on the generic and mythic strength of comedy and the theories of Bakhtin, Bergson, and Hobbes, this book identifies the radical nature of early modern English comedy. The satirical comedic actions that shape the "Shepherds' Play," Thomas Dekker's pamphlets, and the comic dramas of Marston, Middleton, and Jonson are all driven, Bowers points out, by an ability to criticize authority, assert plebeian culture, and insist on the complexity and innovation of human discourse. The texts examined (including The Jew of Malta, Metamorphosis of Ajax, Antonio and Mellida, Bartholomew Fair, The Alchemist, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside) simultaneously create and employ standard comedic elements. Farce, absurdity, excess, over-the-top characters, unremitting irony, black humor, toilet humor, and tricksters of all types - such features and more combine to satirize medical, religious, and political authority and to implement necessary social change. Written with a narrative ease, Radical Comedy in Early Modern England shows how comic interventions both describe and reconfigure prevalent authority in its own time while arguing that, through early modern comedy, one can observe the changes in social behavior and understandings characteristic of the Renaissance.
Rick Bowers is a Professor of English in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada.
