Theatres and Encyclopedias in Early Modern Europe: 44 (Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture, Series Number 44)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 2/27/2003
EAN 9780521809146, ISBN10: 0521809142
Hardcover, 312 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
In this 2003 book West explores what 'theatre' meant to medieval and Renaissance writers and places Renaissance drama within the influential context of the encyclopedic writings produced at the time. It was an encyclopedic culture, obsessed with sorting knowledge, and early encyclopedias presented themselves as textual theatres, in which everything knowable could be represented in concrete, visible form. Medieval and Renaissance plays, similarly, took encyclopedic themes as their topics: the mysteries of nature, universal history, the world of learning. But instead of transmitting authorized knowledge unambiguously, as it was supposed to be, the theatre created a situation in which ordinary experience could become a source of authority. West covers a wide range of works, from the encyclopedic texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to Marlowe's Dr Faustus, Jonson's The Alchemist, and Bacon's Novum Organum, to provide a fascinating picture of the cultural life of the period.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on texts
Introduction
circles of learning
1. The space of the encyclopedia
2. The idea of a theatre
3. Tricks of vision, truths of discourse
illustration, ars combinatoria, and authority
4. Holding the mirror up to nature?
the humanist theatre beside itself
5. The show of learning and the performance of knowledge
humors, Epigrams, and 'an universal store'
6. Francis Bacon's theatre of Orpheus
'literate experience' and experimental science
Notes
Bibliography
Index.