Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. xi, 315 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

1. If the Renaissance was the Golden Age of English comedy, the Restoration was the Silver. These comedies are full of tricksters attempting to gain estates, the emblem and the reality of power in late feudal England. The tricksters appear in a number of guises, such as heroines landing their men, younger brothers seeking estates, or Cavaliers threatened with dispossession.
2. Now one of the leading scholars of Restoration drama offers a cultural history of the period's comedy that puts the plays in perspective and reveals the ideological function they performed in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century.
3. To explain this function, J. Douglas Canfield groups the plays into three categories: social comedy, which underwrites Stuart ideology; subversive comedy, which undercuts it; and comical satire, which challenges it as fundamentally immoral or amoral. Through play-by-play analysis, he demonstrates how most of the comedies support the ideology of the Stuart monarchs and the aristocracy, upholding what they regarded as their natural right to rule because of an innate superiority over all other classes.
4. A significant minority of comedies, however, reveal cracks in class solidarity, portray witty heroines who inhabit the margins of society, or give voice to folk tricksters who embody a democratic force nearly capable of overwhelming class hierarchy. A smaller yet but still significant minority end in no resolution, no restoration but, at their most radical, playfully portray Stuart ideology as empty rhetoric.

Alternative title

1. Tricksters and estates

Subject

1. English drama > Restoration, 1660-1700 > History and criticism
2. Literature and society > Great Britain > History > 17th century
3. English drama (Comedy) > History and criticism
4. Inheritance and succession in literature
5. Rogues and vagabonds in literature
6. Deception in literature
7. Tricksters in literature

Contents

1. Pt. 1. Social Comedy. 1. Nubile Tricksters Land Their Men. 2. Mature Women Tricksters Man Their Land. 3. Eligible Male Tricksters Get into the Deed. 4. Some Tricksters Get Tricked. 5. Town Tricksters Tup Their Rivals' Women. 6. Satiric Butts Get Disciplined -- Pt. 2. Subversive Comedy. 7. Town Tricksters Tup Each Other's Women. 8. Naughty Heroine Tricksters Get Away with It. 9. Male Folk Tricksters Erupt from Below. 10. Female Folk Tricksters Climb on Top -- Pt. 3. Comical Satire. 11. Tricksters Scourge and Get Scourged. 12. Tricksters Get Blown about by the Wind.

Owning institution

1. Columbia University Libraries

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (p. [284]-294) and indexes.