Donatella Pallotti, Paola Pugliatti (general editors). Raimondo Guarino, Lene Buhl Petersen, eds Journal of Early Modern Studies 8: Beyond Books and Plays Cultures and Practices of writing in Early Modern Theatre

The essays in the volume address the major cultural phenomenon of the production of early modern spectacle, including the multiple practices, cultures, and uses of writing that underpin and surround that which was performed. This situates volume 8 ofJEMS at the crossroad between textual studies, performance or theatre studies, cultural direct relationships between book and stage, as explored in studies of recent years, the topics covered here address textual practices both as sources and offshoots of contextual theatrical enterprises; the relationships between texts and performers’ cultural environments in time and place, and the relationships between the popular professional theatre and a literary environment. Attention is also paid to the production of text in theatrical practice from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century moving from printed canons to manuscript plays and fragments of plays onwards to variants of mummers’ plays and the use of dramatic woodcut illustrations in printed performative genres. This volume not only focuses on the contexts of major national traditions (i.e. Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, French theatre, Italian professional and popular theatre and their theatrical environments) but also on peripheral and lesser known domains. The essays accordingly explore the connections between printed texts and performances and, importantly, the (vernacular) afterlives of printed texts and performances, including popular, civic and religious representations and traditions of representation. We hope that this collection of articles will open up new horizons and allow readers to ponder the syntheses and synergies between literary traditions and performance cultures in early modern Europe.