Illegitimate Power
eBook - PDF

Illegitimate Power

Bastards in Renaissance Drama

  1. 288 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Illegitimate Power

Bastards in Renaissance Drama

About this book

In Renaissance Drama, the bastard is an extraordinarily powerful and disruptive figure. We have only to think of Caliban or of Edmund to realise the challenge presented by the illegitimate child.Drawing on a wide rage of play texts, Alison Findlay shows how illegitimacy encoded and threatened to deconstruct some of the basic tenets of patriarchal rule. She considers bastards as indicators and instigators of crises in early modern England, reading them in relation to witch craft, spiritual insecurities and social unrest in family and State. The characters discussed range from demi-devils, unnatural villains and clowns to outstanding heroic or virtuous types who challenge officially sanctioned ideas of illegitimacy. The final chapter of the book considers bastards in performance; their relationship with theatre spaces and audiences. Illegitimate voices, Findlay argues, can bring about the death of the author/father and open the text as a piece of theatre, challenging accepted notions of authority.

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Yes, you can access Illegitimate Power by Alison Findlay in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Illegitimate power: Bastards in Renaissance Drama
  2. Half Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. Contents
  7. Preface and acknowledgements
  8. 1 'A great kindred in the kingdome': illegitimacy in Renaissance England
  9. 2 Bastardy and evil
  10. 3 Unnatural children
  11. 4 Natural children
  12. 5 Heroic bastards
  13. 6 Bastards and theatre
  14. Appendix Plays with bastard characters, 1588-1652
  15. References
  16. Index