Solo Performances: Staging the Early Modern Self in England(132 Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft)

In this volume an international cast of scholars explores conceptions of the self in the literature and culture of the Early Modern England. Drawing on theories of performativity and performance, some contributors revisit monological speech and the soliloquy - that quintessential solo performance - on the stage of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Other authors move beyond the theatre as they investigate solo performances in different cultural locations, from the public stage of the pillory to the mental stage of the writing self. All contributors analyse corporeality, speech, writing and even silence as interrelated modes of self-enactment, whether they read solo performances as a way of inventing, authorizing or even pathologizing the self, or as a mode of fashioning sovereignty. The contributions trace how the performers appropriate specific discourses, whether religious, medical or political, and how they negotiate hierarchies of gender, rank or cultural difference. The articles cut across a variety of genres including plays and masques, religious tracts, diaries and journals, poems and even signatures. The collection links research on the inward and self-reflexive dimension of solo-performances with studies foregrounding the public and interactive dimension of performative self-fashioning. The articles collected here offer new perspectives on Early Modern subjectivity and will be of interest to all scholars and students of the Early Modern period.

Table of Contents:
Manfred Pfister: Foreword Ute Berns: Solo Performances — an Introduction Authoring and Authority Ina Schabert: The Theatre in the Head: Performances of the Self for the Self by the Self Andrew James Johnston: Subjectivity and the Ekphrastic Prerogative: Emilia’s Soliloquy in The Two Noble Kinsmen Richard Wilson: Our Good Will: Shakespeare’s Cameo Performance Werner von Koppenfels: Spiritual Self-Fashioning: John Lilburne at the Pillory Self-Inventions and Pathologies Jürgen Schlaeger: Auto-Dialogues: Performative Creation of Selves Günter Walch: The Life and Strange and Surprising Adventures of Hamlet, of Denmark Maria Del Sapio Garbero: A Spider in the Eye/I: The Hallucinatory Staging of the Self in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale Rui Carvalho Homem: Of Idiocy, Moroseness, and Vitriol: Soloists of Rage in Ben Jonson’s Satire Wolfgang G. Müller: The Poem as Performance: Self-Definition and Self-Exhibition in John Donne’s Songs and Sonets Margret Fetzer: Plays of Self: Theatrical Performativity in Donne Fashioning Sovereignty Roger Lüdeke / Andreas Mahler: Stating the Sovereign Self: Polity, Policy, and Politics on the Early Modern Stage Jerzy Limon: The Monarch as the Solo Performer in Stuart Masque Ralf Hertel: Turkish Brags and Winning Words: Solo Performances in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Notes on Contributors