Shakespeare S Hobby Horse And Early Modern Popular Culture

This book explores the ways in which the early modern hobby-horse featured in different productions of popular culture between the 1580s and 1630s. Natália Pikli approaches this study with a thorough and interdisciplinary examination of hobby-horse references, with commentary on the polysemous uses of the word, offers an informative background to reconsider well-known texts by Shakespeare and others, and provides an overview on the workings of cultural memory regarding popular culture in early modern England. The book will appeal to those with interest in early modern drama and theatre, dramaturgy, popular culture, cultural memory, and iconography.

"This book explores the ways in which the early modern hobby-horse featured in different productions of popular culture between 1580s-1630s. Natâalia Pikli approaches this study with a thorough and interdisciplinary examination of hobby-horse references, with commentary on the polysemous uses of the word, offers an informative background to reconsider well-known texts by Shakespeare and others, and provides an overview on the workings of cultural memory regarding popular culture in early modern England. The book will appeal to those with interest in early modern drama and theatre, dramaturgy, popular culture, cultural memory, and iconography"--

This book explores the ways in which the early modern hobby-horse featured in different productions of popular culture between the 1580s and 1630s. Natália Pikli approaches this study with a thorough and interdisciplinary examination of hobby-horse references, with commentary on the polysemous uses of the word, offers an informative background to reconsider well-known texts by Shakespeare and others, and provides an overview on the workings of cultural memory regarding popular culture in early modern England. The book will appeal to those with interest in early modern drama and theatre, dramaturgy, popular culture, cultural memory, and iconography.

Kevin De Ornellas argues that in Renaissance England the relationship between horse and rider works as an unambiguous symbol of domination by the strong over the weak. There was little sentimental concern for animal welfare, leading to the routine abuse of the material animal. This unproblematic, practical exploitation of the horse led to the currency of the horse/rider relationship as a trope or symbol of exploitation in the literature of the period. Engaging with fiction, plays, poems, and non-fictional prose works of late Tudor and early Stuart England, De Ornellas demonstrates that the horse—a bridled, unwilling slave—becomes a yardstick against which the oppression of England’s poor, women, increasingly uninfluential clergyman, and deluded gamblers is measured. The status of the bitted, harnessed horse was a low one in early modern England—to be compared to such a beast is a demonstration of inferiority and subjugation. To think anything else is to be naïve about the realities of horse management in the period and is to be naïve about the realities of the exploitation of horses and other mammals in the present-day world.

As suggested by the title Early Modern Communi(cati)ons, the volume demonstrates that the connections and common points of reference within early modern studies bind Elizabethan and Jacobean cultural studies and Shakespearean investigations together in an unexpected number of ways, and this diversity of ties has been used as the main theme around which the thirteen essays have been organised. While the first group of essays deals with early modern culture, presenting the socio-historical context necessary for any in-depth literary investigation, as exemplified through analyses of outstanding literary achievements from the period, the second part of the volume focuses on the oeuvre of the most famous representative of the age, William Shakespeare, with individual chapters creating a tangible continuum, moving from the cultural and literary context that informs his works, to their interpretation in present-day performances and their theoretical backgrounds. In the same way as the volume comprises writings on a diverse but still coherent range of topics, the authorial team is equally representative of diversity and continuity at the same time. The authors include several senior scholars working in the Hungarian academic community, representing all significant research centres in the field from all over the country. A number of essays have been contributed by promising young talents as well.

Breaking new ground by considering productions of popular culture from above, rather than from below, this book draws on theorists of cultural studies, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Roger Chartier and John Fiske to synthesize work from disparate fields and present new readings of well-known literary works. Using the literature of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, Mary Ellen Lamb investigates the social narratives of several social groups – an urban, middling group; an elite at the court of James; and an aristocratic faction from the countryside. She states that under the pressure of increasing economic stratification, these social fractions created cultural identities to distinguish themselves from each other – particularly from lower status groups. Focusing on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Jonson's Masque of Oberon, she explores the ways in which early modern literature formed a particularly productive site of contest for deep social changes, and how these changes in turn, played a large role in shaping some of the most well-known works of the period.

Shakespeare representations in cartoons and comic books; film adaptations; pop music; literature and genre fiction; radio; US and UK television.