History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition

Berlin : De Gruyter, 2019.

Under the general editorship: Penskaja E.

Aristotle’s neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics, ch. 9), historians and playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past – arguably since Antiquity, but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges historiographers to differentiate their “emplotments” (White) from literary inventions, this thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction.

Written by experts who teach in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the United States, the articles provide a thorough interpretation of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon, demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples from France, Russia, England, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Chapters

Machiavelli’s Soteriology and the Humanist Quattrocento Dialogue

Ivanova J., , in: History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition.: Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. P. 60–71.

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Added: June 10, 2018

The Historical Writing of Catherine II: Dynasty and Self-Fashioning in “The Chesme Palace” (Chesmenskii Dvorets)

Boltunova E., , in: History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition.: Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. P. 86–95.

The article explores the Russian empress Catherine II’s attempt to fashion her individual and monarchical “self” in historical plays and articles written and published in the late 18th century (“Chesmenskiy dvorets (Chesma Palace)” in particular). The author interprets how Catherine II as an enlightened European monarch used theatrical stage and literature to communicate her political and ...

Added: August 17, 2018

Lucretia without Poniard: Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft’s Geeraerdt van Velsen between Livy and Tacitus

Sokolov P., , in: History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition.: Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. P. 72–85.

In this paper we set ourselves the goal of examining the figure of the female protagonist of Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft’s historical tragedy Geeraerdt van Velsen (1613), Machtelt van Velsen, in its connection with the classical “archetypical rape victim” Lucretia, transformed by Livy into an exemplum of republican virtus, feminine gloria, conjugal modestia, and castitas. ...

Added: October 30, 2018

Fielding’s Farces: Travestying the Historiosophical Discourse

Penskaja E., , in: History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition.: Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. P. 101–111.

Burlesque tragedy was reanimated at the end of the eighteenth century, complemented by everyday social and occupational satire. The genre was resumed in the farce plays Puss in Boots (Der gestiefelte Kater) and The Life and Death of Little Thomas (Leben und Taten des kleinen Thomas), written by Ludwig Tieck in the 1790s through 1810s, ...

Added: October 30, 2019

Ostrovsky’s Experience of the Creation of the European Theatrical Canon and Russian Stage Practice

Kupcova O., , in: History and Drama: The Pan-European Tradition.: Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019. P. 112–120.

Alexander Ostrovsky’s dramatic heritage has been primarily regarded as ‘slice-of-life’ plays in the Russian historico-theatrical tradition, due to the detailed descriptions of everyday life and sociopsychological characters/types it represents. The very first (and until recently the only monographic) study of Ostrovsky in a west European language was Ostrovski et son théâtre de mœurs russes (1912), by the ...

Added: August 18, 2020

Keywords: poetics, fiction, drama