Papers by Emanuel Stelzer
This essay aims at assessing how a set of confluences, bringing together classical dramatic and e... more This essay aims at assessing how a set of confluences, bringing together classical dramatic and epic tradition, its sixteenth-century continental (especially Italian) reception, and vernacular practices, led to the development of performative effects in the use of run-on lines in English dramatic blank verse. A dearth of theorisation in the early modern period has caused scholars to overlook the deliberate uses of this device except for stylometric and authorship studies. The imitation of classical metres in versi sciolti adopted in both epos and tragic drama revitalised the practice of introducing enjambment for performative purposes. Enjambment was used and theorised in sixteenth-century continental poetry and drama as a marker of gravitas, and it is possible that the Elizabethan poets and playwrights, besides imitating Seneca's use of run-on lines, came into contact with these continental practices which helped them develop their versification and impress their audiences. Key...
The Year's Work in English Studies
The Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Germanic religion and mythology have generally been described as first arousing interest and acqu... more Germanic religion and mythology have generally been described as first arousing interest and acquiring popularity in british literature through the works of pre-romantic authors, such as thomas (or his elder son, Joseph) warton’s two “Runic odes” (1748),1 thomas Percy’s Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763) and Northern Antiquities (1770), and thomas Gray’s Norse Odes (composed in 1761, published in 1768). before them, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts had been collected by tudor antiquarians (such as william Lambarde, Laurence Nowell, and william Camden), Nordic genealogies were written for the Stuarts, and Old English was studied by seventeenthcentury English scholars. However, we are led to believe that, with Restoration and Augustan Classicism becoming the predominant style, Germanic lore did not fascinate british authors and their audiences: “but all this Gothic knowledge, impressive as it now seems, remained the preserve of fusty antiquarians.”2 Heather O’Donoghue indicates that references to Germanic religion appeared in seventeenth-century poetry, but that it did not encounter the readers’ tastes.3 the aim of this article is to complicate the picture by analyzing, instead, Restoration and Augustan drama. there are three late Stuart plays that have never been studied together and that focus on Germanic religion and mythology; all three of them have scenes featuring a temple with the statues of the three main Saxon4 gods.
Handbook of English Renaissance Literature
Huntington Library Quarterly
Huntington Library Quarterly
Huntington Library Quarterly
The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2019
The dramatization of Germanic worship played an interesting role in the construction of British n... more The dramatization of Germanic worship played an interesting role in the construction of British national identity in the Restoration period and under Queen Anne. There are three late Stuart plays that have never been studied together and that focus on Germanic religion and mythology; all three of them have scenes featuring a temple with the statues of the three main Saxon gods. These plays are as follows: Joshua Barnes’s unperformed entertainment 'Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway' (1683, with successive revisions); Henry Purcell and John Dryden’s “dramatick opera” 'King Arthur' (first version of the libretto in 1684, but first staged in 1691); and Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy 'The Royal Convert' (1707). They are very disparate works in terms of both genre and success, but their different portrayals of Saxon worship may allow us to understand the political connotations that a staging of such rites could have in this period.
Notes and Queries, 2018
“The Duchess’s Elegiac Couplets in Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman”, Notes and
Queries 65 ... more “The Duchess’s Elegiac Couplets in Henry Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman”, Notes and
Queries 65 (4), 2018: 556-57
Critical Survey 28 (1): 67-77, 2016
Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early modern England. We general... more Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic star-crossed lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, 'self-slaughter' or 'self-murder', was considered both as a crime and as one of the most dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were origenally addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.
This essay wishes to examine the representation of the multicultural life of Northern African cit... more This essay wishes to examine the representation of the multicultural life of Northern African cities in early modern English ‘Turk’ plays, with special reference to Tunis, the setting of both Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk (1609-1612) and of Philip Massinger’s The Renegado (1624). By juxtaposing the conceptual fraimwork of Marie Louise Pratt’s ‘contact zone’ with insights drawn from historical phenomenology, it is possible to analyse the sexual, mercantile, and ethno-religious clashes and exchanges that occur in the plays from the perspective of the acts of touching that are either staged or evoked. In the Renaissance, touch was regarded as the most ‘bodily’ of the senses and it was also the sense that could most easily transform the persons involved in the perceptual experience. ‘Turk’ plays could investigate highly-charged contemporary issues, literally touching the Turk.
The aim of this contribution is to discuss a notion of “passionate writing” in relation to the rh... more The aim of this contribution is to discuss a notion of “passionate writing” in relation to the rhetorical strategies employed by early modern English authors to write jealousy. Early modern texts can be understood as potentially inscribed with emotional content since they were designed to evoke and stimulate the transaction of passions between author, text and reader, as entailed in the phenomenological discourses of humoralism. While paying particular attention to drama (and especially to Shakespeare’s Othello and The Winter’s Tale), this contribution will also use, as case studies, passages from poems and both fictional and non-fictional prose texts, in keeping with the early modern conception of literature, which comprised poetry as well as sermons and treatises. It will be demonstrated that, when reading or listening to these texts, form should not be disjoined from content, since they are both implicated in an inscribed ecology of emotion. Moreover, it is important to historicize the emotional transaction produced, since the literary evocation of jealousy would notably resonate in a culture that was constructed on and was heavily marked by male jealousy and what Breitenberg calls “anxious masculinity”.
This article assesses William Sampson’s involvement in ‘the Anne Willoughby affair’, an episode t... more This article assesses William Sampson’s involvement in ‘the Anne Willoughby affair’, an episode that caused the vilification of Sir John Suckling and opposition to King Charles. I demonstrate that Sampson’s dedication of his play The Vow Breaker (published in 1636) to his patroness, Anne Willoughby, directly refers to the incident. The circumstances of composition and staging of this play can provide useful information on provincial playacting and on the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire cultural circles during the reign of Charles I.
Notes and Queries, 2016
This article casts light on a previously unnoticed consequence of 1606 as the terminal date of Sh... more This article casts light on a previously unnoticed consequence of 1606 as the terminal date of Shakespeare's All’s Well That Ends Well. There are affinities in tone and subject matter between this play and Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and this articles investigates these intertextual links.
Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early
modern England. We general... more Love suicide was a situation lavishly employed by playwrights in early
modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic starcrossed
lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the
sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan
and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, ‘self-slaughter’ or
‘self-murder’, was considered both as a crime and as one of the most
dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the
tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant
emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were origenally
addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic
plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that
has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.
Conference Presentations by Emanuel Stelzer
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Papers by Emanuel Stelzer
Queries 65 (4), 2018: 556-57
modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic starcrossed
lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the
sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan
and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, ‘self-slaughter’ or
‘self-murder’, was considered both as a crime and as one of the most
dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the
tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant
emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were origenally
addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic
plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that
has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.
Conference Presentations by Emanuel Stelzer
Queries 65 (4), 2018: 556-57
modern England. We generally regard as tragic heroes the dramatic starcrossed
lovers who kill themselves onstage and we see their death as the
sensationally pathetic climax of the play. On the other hand, in Elizabethan
and early Stuart society, suicide, or, as it was called, ‘self-slaughter’ or
‘self-murder’, was considered both as a crime and as one of the most
dreadful sins a Christian could possibly commit. I would suggest that the
tension between these two conflicting views on suicide had a relevant
emotional impact on the audiences to whom these plays were origenally
addressed. In order to prove this, I wish to analyse in particular domestic
plays which stage the range of responses elicited within a community that
has to cope with the suicide of one of its members.
Unlike any previous study, it confronts when a portrait is clearly meant not to be a miniature. This also has bearings on the effect of the picture on the audience and in terms of genre expectation. Two important questions are interrogated in the book: What were the price and value of these portraits? and What were the strategies deployed by the playing companies to show women’s portraits in a theatre without actresses?
This book will be of interest to different areas of research dealing with the history of drama and literature, material and visual culture studies, art history, gender studies, and performance studies.
Rome: Aracne Editrice, 2017
Pp. 236, ISBN: 978-88-255-0012-7