University of Pennsylvania Press
The Persistence of Allegory
About this book
In an impressively comparative work, Jane K. Brown explores the tension in European drama between allegory and neoclassicism from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Imitation of nature is generally thought to triumph over religious allegory in the Elizabethan and French classical theater, a shift attributable to the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the Renaissance. But if Aristotle's terminology was rapidly assimilated, Brown demonstrates that change in dramatic practice took place only gradually and partially and that allegory was never fully cast off the stage.
The book traces a complex history of neoclassicism in which new allegorical forms flourish and older ones are constantly revitalized. Brown reveals the allegorical survivals in the works of such major figures as Shakespeare, Calderón, Racine, Vondel, Metastasio, Goethe, and Wagner and reads tragedy, comedy, masque, opera, and school drama together rather than as separate developments. Throughout, she draws illuminating parallels to modes of representation in the visual arts.
A work of broad interest to scholars, teachers, and students of theatrical form, The Persistence of Allegory presents a fundamental rethinking of the history of European drama.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Preface
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 1. Introduction
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 2. Claude's Allegories and Literary Neoclassicism
15 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 3. Secular Tragedy: Neoclassicism in the Sixteenth Century
46 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 4. Allegory and Passion: Latin Dramatic Forms in the Seventeenth Century
76 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 5. The Allegorical Idioms of the Illusionist Stage: Spectacle in the Seventeenth Century
113 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 6. Opera and Dance: The Revival of Greek Tragedy
152 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 7. The Greek Revival: German Classicism and the Recovery of Spoken Drama
183 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Chapter 8. Wagner and the Death of Gesamtkunstwerk
222 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Coda: "This Insubstantial Pageant"
238 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
243 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Works Cited
267 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
281
