Reformers On Stage : : Popular Drama and Propaganda in the Low Countries of Charles V, 1515-1556 / / Gary K. Waite.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Waite, Gary K.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2000
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

During the time of Charles V, plays were written and performed by amateur literary and acting societies known as chambers of rhetoric. Members of the chambers saw themselves not only as entertainers, but as religious and cultural leaders, and on the strength of this sense of mission became the most influential performers of vernacular drama in the Low Countries. Gary Waite examines the social and religious messages of the plays presented, showing how they promoted or opposed calls for reform, religious and otherwise.Presenting an overview of some eighty surviving scripts from across the Low Countries, Waite considers the culture and drama of two distinct urban communities in particular: Antwerp and Amsterdam. He argues that the dramatists promoted a wide range of reform perspectives, but in so doing they reshaped reform ideas to accommodate their own concerns as urban artisans and merchants. In the end, despite their desire for peace, they contributed significantly to the rise of anticlerical sentiment and reform aspirations and to increasing dissatisfaction with Habsburg rule.Offering perspectives gleaned from primary material that is available only in sixteenth-century Dutch, this study adds significantly to existing scholarship on the local ramifications of the Reformation in the Low Countries.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION: REFORM PROPAGANDA AND VERNACULAR DRAMA -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- PART I - Drama and Society in the Low Countries -- 1. Civic Culture and Religious Reform in the Netherlands -- 2. Rhetoricians and Urban Culture -- PART II - Vernacular Drama and the Early Urban Reformation -- 3. The Chambers of Rhetoric in Antwerp -- 4. Amsterdam Rhetoricians and the Reformation -- PART III - Reform Themes in Rhetorician Drama, 1519-56 -- 5. Anticlerical Drama and the Reform Controversies in the Low Countries, 1519-38 -- 6. Popular Ritual, Social Protest, and the Rhetorician Competition in Ghent, 1539 -- 7. Rhetoricians and Reform after the Ghent Competition, 1539-56 -- 8. War, Peace, and the Imperial Majesty in Rhetorician Drama, 1519-56 -- CONCLUSION -- APPENDIX: List of Plays Composed during the Reign of Charles V and Their Reform Perspective -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX