French Renaissance and Baroque Drama

Text, Performance, Theory

Edited by Michael Meere - Contributions by Sara Beam; Christian Biet; Alison Calhoun; Fabien Cavaillé; Sybile Chevallier-Micki; Caroline Gates; Elizabeth Guild; Richard Hillman; John D. Lyons; Andreea Marculescu; Corinne Noirot; Stephanie O’Hara; Antónia Szabari; Phillip Usher and Ellen Welch

The fifteen articles in this volume highlight the richness, diversity, and experimental nature of French and Francophone drama before the advent of what would become known as neoclassical French theater of the seventeenth century. In essays ranging from conventional stage plays (tragedies, comedies, pastoral, and mystery plays) to court ballets, royal entrances, and meta- and para-theatrical writings of the period from 1485 to 1640, French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory seeks to deepen and problematize our knowledge of texts, co-texts, and performances of drama from literary-historical, artistic, political, social, and religious perspectives. Moreover, many of the articles engage with contemporary theory and other disciplines to study this drama, including but not limited to psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology, and performance theory. The diversity of the essays in their methodologies and objects of study, none of which is privileged over any other, bespeaks the various types of drama and the numerous ways we can study them.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61149-548-5 • Hardback • February 2015 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-1-61149-549-2 • eBook • February 2015 • $121.50 • (£94.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / French, Drama / European / French, Performing Arts / Theater / General

French Renaissance and Baroque Drama

Text, Performance, Theory

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The fifteen articles in this volume highlight the richness, diversity, and experimental nature of French and Francophone drama before the advent of what would become known as neoclassical French theater of the seventeenth century. In essays ranging from conventional stage plays (tragedies, comedies, pastoral, and mystery plays) to court ballets, royal entrances, and meta- and para-theatrical writings of the period from 1485 to 1640, French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, Theory seeks to deepen and problematize our knowledge of texts, co-texts, and performances of drama from literary-historical, artistic, political, social, and religious perspectives. Moreover, many of the articles engage with contemporary theory and other disciplines to study this drama, including but not limited to psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology, and performance theory. The diversity of the essays in their methodologies and objects of study, none of which is privileged over any other, bespeaks the various types of drama and the numerous ways we can study them.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6½ x 9½

978-1-61149-548-5 • Hardback • February 2015 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-1-61149-549-2 • eBook • February 2015 • $121.50 • (£94.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / French, Drama / European / French, Performing Arts / Theater / General

Author

Michael Meere is visiting assistant professor of French at Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Notes on Sources and Translations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Mystery Plays Reloaded: Performing Demonic Possession in the Histoires véritables
Andreea Marculescu
Chapter 2: Abraham sacrifiant and the End of Ethics
John D. Lyons
Chapter 3: Farce, Community, and the Performativity of Violence in Rabelais’s Quart Livre: The Chiquanous Episode
Caroline Gates and Michael Meere
Chapter 4: Calvinist “Comedie” and Conversion during the French Reformation: La comedie du pape malade (1561) and La comedie du monde malade et mal pensé (1568)
Sara Beam
Chapter 5: French Humanist Comedy in Search of an Audience: The Case of Jean de la Taille
Corinne Noirot
Chapter 6: Rethinking the Politics of Court Spectacle: Performance and Diplomacy under the Valois
Ellen R. Welch
Chapter 7: Our Future Barbarism: Sacrifice, the Body, and Performance in Robert Garnier’s Greek TragediesAntónia SzabariChapter 8: Courtroom Drama during the Wars of Religion: Robert Garnier and the Paris Parlement
Phillip John Usher
Chapter 9: From the Politics of Performance to the Anthropology of Festivals: Montaigne’s “Of the Education of Children” (I.26) and “Of Coaches” (III.6)
Fabien Cavaillé
Chapter 10: Too Late? The Drama of the Cannibals in Rouen
Elizabeth Guild
Chapter 11: Red and Black, Pink and Green: Jacques de Fonteny’s Gay Pastoral Play
Christian Biet
Chapter 12: Stage Designs of Cruelty: Theater in Rouen at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century
Sybile Chevallier-Micki
Chapter 13: The Court Turned Inside Out: The Collapse of Dignity in Louis XIII’s Burlesque Ballets
Alison Calhoun
Chapter 14: Poison in French Tragedy and Tragic Stories, 1600-1636
Stephanie O’Hara
Chapter 15: Et in Arcadia alter egos: Playing Politics with Pastoral in Two French Baroque Dramas
Richard Hillman
Bibliography
About the Contributors