1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456671303321

Autore

Witmore Michael

Titolo

Pretty creatures [[electronic resource] ] : children and fiction in the English Renaissance / / Michael Witmore

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2007

ISBN

0-8014-6355-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (245 p.)

Disciplina

820.9/28209031

Soggetti

English literature - Early modern, 1500-1700 - History and criticism

Children in literature

Theater and children - England - History - 16th century

Theater and children - England - History - 17th century

Children - England - History - 16th century

Children - England - History - 17th century

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Ut pueritas poesis : the child and fiction in the English Renaissance -- Animated children in Elizabeth's coronation pageant of 1559 -- Phatic metadrama and the touch of irony in English children's theater -- Mamillius, The winter's tale, and the impetus of fiction -- The lies children tell : counterfeiting victims and witnesses in early modern English witchcraft trials and possessions.

Sommario/riassunto

Children had surprisingly central roles in many of the public performances of the English Renaissance, whether in entertainments-civic pageants, children's theaters, Shakespearean drama-or in more grim religious and legal settings, as when children were "possessed by demons" or testified as witnesses in witchcraft trials. Taken together, such spectacles made repeated connections between child performers as children and the mimetic powers of fiction in general. In Pretty Creatures, Michael Witmore examines the ways in which children, with their proverbial capacity for spontaneous imitation and their imaginative absorption, came to exemplify the virtues and powers of fiction during this era.As much concerned with Renaissance poetics as



with children's roles in public spectacles of the period, Pretty Creatures attempts to bring the antics of children-and the rich commentary these antics provoked-into the mainstream of Renaissance studies, performance studies, and studies of reformation culture in England. As such, it represents an alternative history of the concept of mimesis in the period, one that is built from the ground up through reflections on the actual performances of what was arguably nature's greatest mimic: the child.