Solo performances : : staging the early modern self in England / / edited by Ute Berns.

• Superior document: Internationale Forschungen zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 132
• TeilnehmendeR: Berns, Ute.
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam ;, New York, NY : : Rodopi,, 2010.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 132.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 pages) :; illustrations.
• Notes: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Other title: Preliminary Material --; Foreword /; Solo Performances — an Introduction /; The Theatre in the Head Performances of the Self for the Self by the Self /; Subjectivity and the Ekphrastic Prerogative Emilia’s Soliloquy in The Two Noble Kinsmen /; Our Good Will Shakespeare’s Cameo Performance /; Spiritual Self-Fashioning John Lilburne at the Pillory /; Auto-Dialogues Performative Creation of Selves /; The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Hamlet, of Denmark /; A Spider in the Eye/I The Hallucinatory Staging of the Self in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale /; Of Idiocy, Moroseness, and Vitriol Soloists of Rage in Ben Jonson’s Satire /; The Poem as Performance Self-Definition and Self-Exhibition in John Donne’s Songs and Sonets /; Plays of Self Theatrical Performativity in Donne /; Stating the Sovereign Self Polity, Policy, and Politics on the Early Modern Stage /; The Monarch as the Solo Performer in Stuart Masque /; Turkish Brags and Winning Words Solo Performances in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great /; Notes on Contributors.
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• ISBN: 9042029536
• ISSN: 0929-6999
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: edited by Ute Berns.

In this volume an international cast of scholars explores conceptions of the self in the literature and culture of the Early Modern England. Drawing on theories of performativity and performance, some contributors revisit monological speech and the soliloquy - that quintessential solo performance - on the stage of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Other authors move beyond the theatre as they investigate solo performances in different cultural locations, from the public stage of the pillory to the mental stage of the writing self. All contributors analyse corporeality, speech, writing and even silence as interrelated modes of self-enactment, whether they read solo performances as a way of inventing, authorizing or even pathologizing the self, or as a mode of fashioning sovereignty. The contributions trace how the performers appropriate specific discourses, whether religious, medical or political, and how they negotiate hierarchies of gender, rank or cultural difference. The articles cut across a variety of genres including plays and masques, religious tracts, diaries and journals, poems and even signatures. The collection links research on the inward and self-reflexive dimension of solo-performances with studies foregrounding the public and interactive dimension of performative self-fashioning. The articles collected here offer new perspectives on Early Modern subjectivity and will be of interest to all scholars and students of the Early Modern period.