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E-book
Author Ryner, Bradley D., author

Title Performing economic thought : English drama and mercantile writing 1600-1642 / Bradley D. Ryner
Published Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2014]

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 217 pages) : illustrations (black and white), facsimiles (black and white)
Series Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture
Edinburgh critical studies in Renaissance culture.
Contents Title Page; Imprint; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Series Editor's Preface; Introduction: Performing Economic Thought; 1 Tables and Metaphors: Walter Mountfort's The Launching of the Mary; 2 Overflowing Props: Philip Massinger's The Emperor of the East; 3 Characterising Economics: Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling; 4 The Panoramic Stage: William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Cymbeline; 5 Stage-Managing Interpretation: Ben Jonson's The Staple of News; 6 Generic Self-Reflexivity: Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew
Summary Performing Economic Thought examines representations of economic exchange in English plays and mercantile treatises written between the chartering of the English East India Company in 1600 and the closing of the public playhouses at the outset of the English Civil War in 1642. These were crucial decades during which economic thinkers re-examined how they conceptualised and depicted commerce as a system. Adapting approaches pioneered by scholars working under the expansive rubric of Science Studies, Performing Economic Thought compares the formal features of treatises and plays, giving particular attention to those features unique to the theatrical experience (for example, the presence of props and actors' bodies and the position of the audience relative to the staged action) that allowed economic systems to be represented and conceptualised differently in the playhouse than in the printed treatise. The book argues that the representational techniques available to playwrights facilitated a more insightful exploration of economic systems than those available to economic writers. Key Features:. Reevaluates the pseudo-literary features of mercantile treatises in light of recent work in Science Studies and rhetoric of economics Analyzes specific ways that early modern plays could produce knowledge Outlines a dramaturgy that allows readers to appreciate non-canonical plays and reevaluate canonical ones. Provides an account of the relationship between economic thought and drama that offers a historical perspective to modern debates about the fictionality and performativity of economic discourse
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject English drama -- 17th century -- History and criticism
Mercantile system in literature.
Economics in literature.
Commerce in literature.
DRAMA -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- Shakespeare.
Commerce in literature
Economics in literature
English drama
Mercantile system in literature
Drama
Englisch
Wirtschaft Motiv
Handel Motiv
Merkantilismus
Literature.
Genre/Form Electronic books
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0748684662
9780748684663