Research Catalog

Title

Wanton words : rhetoric and sexuality in English Renaissance drama / Madhavi Menon.

Author

Menon, Madhavi

Publication

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 236 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"In Wanton Words, Madhavi Menon intimately and expertly couples classical and Renaissance handbooks of rhetoric with canonical Renaissance plays and demonstrates their shared propensity to speak about sex - often transgressive sex - in the same instance that they speak about the workings of language." "While other studies of rhetoric have confined their analyses to local questions of interpretive interest, Menon introduces rhetoric into the largely medico-juridical realm of studies on Renaissance sexuality. In doing so, she suggests that rhetoric allows us to think through the erotics of language in ways that pay most attention to the frisson of English Renaissance drama. Sustained deconstructive parsings of tropes - metaphor, metonymy, allegory, catachresis, and more - enables their wantonness to emerge in subjects usually considered unrelated to rhetoric: race in Othello, colonialism in The Tempest, tragedy in Romeo and Juliet, and cowardice in The Roaring Girl."--BOOK JACKET.

Alternative Title

Rhetoric and sexuality in English Renaissance drama

Subject

• 1500-1699
• English drama > Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 > History and criticism
• Sex in literature
• English language > Early modern, 1500-1700 > Rhetoric
• English drama > 17th century > History and criticism
• Language and sex > England
• Renaissance > England
• Figures of speech
• Sexualité dans la littérature
• Langage et sexualité > Angleterre > Histoire > 16e siècle
• Théâtre anglais > 16e siècle > Histoire et critique
• Language and sex > England > History

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-230) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Setting the Stage: Metaphor -- 2. Performance Anxiety: Metonymy, Richard II, The Roaring Girl -- 3. First Night: Metalepsis, Romeo and Juliet, All's Well that Ends Well -- 4. Cast in Order of Appearance: Catachresis, Othello, King John -- 5. Encore! Allegory, Volpone, The Tempest -- After Words: Henry VIII and the Ends of History.

ISBN

0802088376 (acid-free paper)

LCCN

^^2004267055

OCLC

• 52286255
• SCSB-10809967

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library