Renaissance Earwitnesses Rumor and Early Modern Masculinity [Hardcover]

Renaissance Earwitnesses examines how maintaining masculinity on the early modern stage is intimately tied to 'earwitnessing,' or a sense of 'judicious listening' in his reading of plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Cary, and Jonson.Preface: Listening in an Age of Truthnapping Introduction: Buzz, Buzz: Rumor in Early Modern England Table Talk: Marlowe's Mouthy Men Bruits and Britons: Rumor, Counsel, and the Henriad 'I heard a bustling rumour': Shakespeare's Aural Insurgents 'Nothing but the truth': Ben Jonson's Comedy of Rumours 'Contrary to truth': Elizabeth Cary's Tragedy of Rumour

Throughout this well-executed, carefully constructed, and witty book, [Botelho] examines a wide range of texts about rumor and related subjects like cautionary aural discernment. His accessible, detailed analyses of dramatic works are impressive. - Comparative Drama

Keith Botelho intervenes in conversations about early modern conceptionsof speech and silence by shifting attention away from the oral and onto the aural. . .Botelho provides a new perspective on the transgressive potential of activesilence as a method of gaining information and cultural authority. He alsoeffectively highlights men s anxieties about their own bodily openness. - Renaissance Quarterly

RenaissanceEarwitnesses, supported by close readings of plays by Marlowe,Shakespeare, and Jonson (as well as a brief discussion of Elizabeth Cary), offers some fresh insights into the ways that maletongues could threaten masculine authority and generate maleanxiety, as well as the ways dramatists could respond to rumorand the possibilities of controlling it. - Studies in English Literature

Renaissance Earwitnessesis an important contribution to the growing scholarship on early modern drama s engagement with aural and acoustic traditions and practices.The book provides a valuable intervention in the scholarly debate about the early modern gendering of the disseminatil“B