Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy: Performance, Ethics, Poetics [Hardcover]

Studies the representation of violence in tragedies written for the French stage during the sixteenth century, and explores its connection with issues such as politics, religion, gender, and militantism to place the plays within their historical, cultural, and theatrical contexts.The performance of violence on the stage has played an integral role in French tragedy since its inception.Onstage Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedyis the first book to tell this story. It traces and examines the ethical and poetic stakes of violence, as playwrights were experimenting with the newly discovered genre during decades of religious and civil war (c. 1550-1598). The study begins with an overview of the origins of French vernacular tragedy and the complex relationships between violence, performance, ethics, and poetics. The volume focuses on specific plays and analyzes biblical, mythological, historical, and politically topical tragedies--including the stories of Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Medea, the Sultan S?leyman the Magnificent, the Roman general Regulus, and the assassination of the Duke of Guise in 1588--to show how the multifarious uses of violence on stage shed light on a range of pressing issues during that turbulent time, such as religion, gender, politics, and militantism.Introduction: (Re)Centering Violence in Sixteenth-Century French Tragedy1. Performance, Ethics, and Poetics of Violence: An Overview2. Biblical Violence in Catholic and Calvinist Tragedy3. Women Who Kill4. State-Inflicted Violence and the Ethics of Suffering5. The Duke of Guise's Murder and the Imperative of VengeanceConcluding Remarks: Onstage Violence at the Turn of the Seventeenth CenturyMichael Meere,Associate Professor of French and Medieval Studies, Wesleyan UniversityMichael Meere is Associate Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Wesleyan University. He is a scholar of early francophone literatures and cultures with a focus on theater and performance, fl£+