239779 Shakespearean Festive Comedy (S) (SoSe 2014)

"In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare's comedies. Brilliantly interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, Barber traces the inward journey--psychological, bodily, spiritual--of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies' combination of seriousness and levity." (from the book's blurb)

"I have been led into an exploration of the way the social form of Elizabethan holidays contributed to the dramatic form of festive comedy. To relate this drama to holiday has proved to be the most effective way to describe its character. And this historical interplay between social and artistic form has an interest of its own: we can see here, with more clarity of outline and detail than is usually possible, how art develops underlying configurations in the social life of a culture."--C. L. Barber, in the Introduction of Shakespeare's Festive Comedy, Princeton, 1959

Bibliography

Barber, C. L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom. Princeton UP. 1959 (See library reserved reading shelf. You need not buy this book!)
Shakespeare, William. Love's Labour's Lost. Ed. G.R. Hibbard (Oxford World Classics), OR G. B. Harrison (Penguin), OR William C. Carroll (New Cambridge Shakespeare).
------. The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Ann Thompson (New Cambridge Shakespeare), OR H. J. Oliver (Oxford World Classics), OR M. J. Kidnie (Penguin)
Behn, Aphra. The Rover. Ed. Simon Trussler (Drama Classics), OR Ed. Jane Spencer (Oxford World's Classics), OR Ed. Robyn Bolam (New Mermaids).