Generic Innovation in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
- Discusses generic change and innovation across a broad range of genres
- Discusses both well-known plays and lesser-known texts to make its case about genre and change
- Presents an historical account of generic change
This book investigates generic change in early modern theatre across multiple genres, unlike much other scholarship, attempting to understand change and innovation in terms of competition within the dramatic field. It draws on the work of Bakhtin and Bourdieu as well as theatre history, book history, and literary criticism to advance its argument about generic change and innovation.
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
Introduction
1. “Chaucer (of all admired) the story gives”: Shakespeare, Medieval Romance, and Generic Innovation
2. “Mirrours more then one”: Spenser, Shakespeare, and Generic Change
3. “King Cambyses’ vein”: Generic Change in the 1580s and 1590s
4. “Lies like truth”: History, Fiction, Genre, Innovation
5. “What’s aught but as ’tis valued”: “History,” Truth, and Fiction
6. “When the bad bleed”: Tenants to Tragedy
Bibliography
Index
For Gieskes, early modern dramatic genres are social: not things to be understood in relation to abstract formal ideals, but processes negotiated within the dynamic contexts of literary production. His rich and wide-ranging book shows how the innovations of Shakespearean drama were the product both of a competitive theatrical marketplace and of a broader, complex, and deeply self-conscious poetic environment.
