Tragicomic Redemptions

Tragicomic Redemptions
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 289
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780812201925
ISBN-13 : 0812201922
Rating : 4/5 (922 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Tragicomic Redemptions by : Valerie Forman

Download or read book Tragicomic Redemptions written by Valerie Forman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early modern period, England radically expanded its participation in an economy that itself was becoming increasingly global. Yet less than twenty years after the highly profitable English East India Company made its first voyage, England was suffering from an economic depression, blamed largely on the shortage of coin necessary to exploit those very same profitable routes. How could there be profit in the face of so much loss, and loss in the face of so much profit? In Tragicomic Redemptions, Valerie Forman contends that three seemingly unrelated domains—the development of new economic theories and practices, especially those related to global trade; the discourses of Christian redemption; and the rise of tragicomedy as the stage's most popular genre—were together crucial to the formulation of a new and paradoxical way of thinking about loss and profit in relationship to one another. Forman reads plays—including Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Pericles, and The Winter's Tale, Fletcher's The Island Princess, Massinger's The Renegado, and Webster's The Devil's Law-Case—alongside a range of historical materials that provide a fuller picture of England's participation in a global economy: the writings of the country's earliest economic theorists, narrative accounts of merchants and captives in the Spice Islands and the Ottoman Empire, and documents that detail the development of the English East India Company, the Levant Company, and even the very idea of the joint-stock company. Unique in its dual focus on literary form and economic practices, Tragicomic Redemptions both shows how concepts fundamental to capitalism's existence, such as "free trade," and "investment," develop within a global context and reveals the exceptional place of dramatic form as a participant in the newly emerging, public discourse of economic theory.

Tragicomic Redemptions Related Books

Tragicomic Redemptions
Language: en
Pages: 289
Authors: Valerie Forman
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-03-26 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

GET EBOOK

In the early modern period, England radically expanded its participation in an economy that itself was becoming increasingly global. Yet less than twenty years
Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama
Language: en
Pages: 310
Authors: Natasha Korda
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-02-11 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama investigates the ways in which work became a subject of inquiry on the early modern stage and the processes by wh
Performing Economic Thought
Language: en
Pages: 230
Authors: Bradley Ryner
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-12-17 - Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

GET EBOOK

This study examines the structural similarities between English mercantile treatises and drama c1600-1642. Bradley D. Ryner analyses the representational conven
Shakespeare Studies
Language: en
Pages: 301
Authors: Susan Zimmerman
Categories: Drama
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-10-31 - Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

GET EBOOK

Tasting Difference
Language: en
Pages: 218
Authors: Gitanjali G. Shahani
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-05-15 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

GET EBOOK

Tasting Difference examines early modern discourses of racial, cultural, and religious difference that emerged in the wake of contact with foreign peoples and f