Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance - Hardcover

Orgel, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520025059 ISBN 13: 9780520025059

Publisher: Univ of California Pr, 1975

Synopsis

Describes the role of the theatre in forming Renaissance royalty's conception of itself, especially in the cases of James I and Charles I. Bibliogs

About this title

From the Back Cover

Elegant, deeply learned, and intellectually adventurous, its implications extend far beyond the boundaries of the Stuart and Caroline masque. It is an indispensible exploration of political art and aestheticized politics . . . a classic."--Stephen Greenblatt, University of California, Berkeley

"The book remains to-day as informative and suggestive as it was when new; in the clarity and grace of its writing, the breadth and precision of its arguments, the aptness and resonance of its examples, it is unsurpassed as an introduction to the dialectic of theatrical illusion and state authority--of play and power--in the culture of Elizabethan and Stuart England."--Louis Montrose, University of California, San Diego

"First published 15 years ago, this splendid study is now revealed as having been prophetic of much important recent work in Renaissance and later literature. As knowing of art, theatrical and political history as it is sensitive to poetry, Orgel's book is learned, lively, and beautifully clear."--John Hollander, Yale University

From the Inside Flap

"Infinite Riches in a little book."--Library Journal "Orgel has here produced an energetic, concise, and always interesting account of English courtly theater of the early seventeenth century. Another technological metaphor might equally characterize The Illusion of Power: it is a spin-off from the magnificently lavish and learned book, Inigo Jones: The Theatre of the Stuart Court, of which Professor Orgel was coauthor with Mr. Roy Strong (Sotheby and the University of California Press, 1973). This latter work presents documentation, literary and graphic, upon which with its eighteen pages of illustrations, the Quantum account ultimately rests. Professor Orgel knows as much as anyone about English court theater, and especially about the relationship between the verbal and spectacular elements of that theater, so that his distilled observations on these matters have a special authority.--The Georgia Review, Review by Angus Fletcher, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter 1975), pp. 967 - 970

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of California Pr
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0520025059
• ISBN 13: 9780520025059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 100