ABSTRACT
In this title, first published in 1985, Michael Bristol draws on several theoretical and critical traditions to study the nature and purpose of theatre as a social institution: on Marxism, and its revisions in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin; on the theories of Emile Durkheim and their adaptations in the work of Victor Turner; and on the history of social life and material culture as practiced by the Annales school. This valuable work is an important contribution to literary criticism, theatre studies and social history and has particular importance for scholars interested in the dramatic literature of Elizabethan England.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |53 pages
Theoretical perspective
chapter |18 pages
Playing the old works historically
chapter |14 pages
The social function of festivity
chapter |14 pages
Carnival and plebeian culture
part |49 pages
The texts of Carnival
chapter |13 pages
Travesty and social order
chapter |16 pages
Butchers and fishmongers
chapter |16 pages
A complete exit from the present order of life'
part |51 pages
Theater and the structure of authority
chapter |14 pages
Authority and the author function
chapter |15 pages
The dialectic of laughter
chapter |16 pages
Clowning and devilment
part |57 pages
Carnivalized literature