Screen LibraryTragicomic redemptions：global economics and the early modern English stage
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Philadelphia |
| Publication Dates: | c2008. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Carrier Form: | 279 p.: ; 24 cm. |
| ISBN: |
9780812240962 (acid-free paper) 0812240960 (acid-free paper) |
| Index Number: | I561 |
| CLC: |
I561.073 I561.064 |
| Call Number: | I561.073/F724 |
| Contents: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [251]-261) and index. Stasis and insularity in The merchant of Venice and Twelfth night -- The voyage out: Pericles -- Poverty, surplus value, and theatrical investment in The winter's tale -- Captivity and "free" trade: Fletcher's The island princess and English commerce in the East Indies in the early 1600s -- Balance, circulation, and equity in the "prosperous voyage" of The renegado -- Webster's The devil's law-case, the limits of tragicomic redemption, and tragicomedy's afterlife. "In Tragicomic Redemptions, Valerie Forman contends that three seemingly unrelated domains - the development of new economic theories and practices, especially those related to global trade; the discourses of Christian redemption; and the rise of tragicomedy as the stage's most popular genre - were together crucial to the formulation of a new and paradoxical way of thinking about loss and profit in relationship to one another." "Forman reads plays alongside a range of historical materials that provide a fuller picture of England's participation in a global economy: the writings of the country's earliest economic theorists, narrative accounts of merchants and captives in the Spice Islands and the Ottoman Empire, and documents that detail the development of the English East India Company, the Levant Company, and even the very idea of the joint-stock company. Unique in its dual focus on literary form and economic practices, Tragicomic Redemptions both shows how concepts fundamental to capitalism's existence, such as "free trade" and "investment," develop within a global context and reveals the exceptional place of dramatic form as a participant in the newly emerging, public discourse of economic theory."--Jacket. |