Echo and Meaning on Early Modern English Stages

This book examines the trope of echo in early modern literature and drama, exploring the musical, sonic, and verbal effects generated by forms of repetition on stage and in print. Focusing on examples where Echo herself appears as a character, this study shows how echoic techniques permeated literary, dramatic, and musical performance in the period, and puts forward echo as a model for engaging with sounds and texts from the past. Starting with sixteenth century translations of myths of Echo from Ovid and Longus, the book moves through the uses of echo in Elizabethan progress entertainments, commercial and court drama, Jacobean court masques, and prose romance. It places the work of well-known dramatists, such as Ben Jonson and John Webster, in the context of broader cultures of performance. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of early modern drama, music, and dance.

List of contents

1 Introduction: Echo and Meaning.- 2 Sounds and Precedent in Elizabethan Progress Entertainments.- 3 Echo and Drama: Cynthia's Revels (1601).- 4 Echo, Dance, and Song in Jacobean Masques.- 5 Conclusion: Disenchanted Echoes in The Duchess of Malfi and The Countess of Montgomery's Urania.

About the author

Susan L. Anderson is Principal Lecturer in English at Sheffield Hallam University. She has published widely on on interdisciplinary approaches to a range of early modern performance genres. Her research also examines disability and representations of difference in Shakespearean drama. She is a trustee of the British Shakespeare Association. 

Summary

Analyzes music’s importance in theatrical performance

Synthesizes the approaches of music studies and sound studies
Examines the complex interactions between sound, meaning, and historical context

Product details

• Authors: Susan L Anderson, Susan L. Anderson
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2018
• EAN: 9783319885223
• ISBN: 978-3-31-988522-3
• No. of pages: 123
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 7 mm x 210 mm
• Weight: 187 g
• Illustrations: XI, 123 p. 7 illus.
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Musik, Theaterwissenschaft, C, Music, Ben Jonson, Theatre Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Geschichte der darstellenden Künste, Theater—History, Theatre History, Early Modern/Renaissance Literature, Early Modern and Renaissance Literature, Literature, Modern, Ovid's Echo myth, echo as comic foil, The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, Elvetham 1591, Origin of Echo in Daphnis and Chloe, historical musicology, Bisham 1592, Kenilworth 1575, echo as oracular voice