TY - BOOK ID - 451536 TI - Shakespeare's festive comedy : a study of dramatic form and its relation to social custom AU - Barber, C. L. AU - Greenblatt, Stephen PY - 2012 SN - 0691060436 9780691060439 0691149526 1283212609 1400839858 9786613212603 PB - Princeton : Princeton University Press, DB - UniCat KW - English literature KW - Drama KW - Shakespeare, William KW - Literature and society KW - English drama (Comedy) KW - Manners and customs in literature. KW - Festivals in literature. KW - Literary form. KW - History KW - History and criticism. KW - Shakespeare, William, KW - Comedies. KW - England KW - Social life and customs KW - Sociology of literature KW - Literature and society - England - History - 16th century. KW - English drama (Comedy) - History and criticism. KW - Shakespeare, William, - 1564-1616 - Comedies. KW - England - Social life and customs - 16th century. KW - Shakespeare, William, - 1564-1616 KW - Literary form KW - A Midsummer Night's Dream. KW - As You Like It. KW - Elizabethan England. KW - Elizabethan comedy. KW - Elizabethan festivals. KW - Elizabethan holidays. KW - Elizabethan society. KW - Forest of Arden. KW - Henry IV. KW - Lord of Misrule. KW - Love's Labour's Lost. KW - May Day. KW - May Game. KW - Nashe. KW - Shakespeare. KW - The Merchant of Venice. KW - Twelfth Night. KW - clowning. KW - comedies. KW - comedy. KW - drama. KW - fantasy. KW - farce. KW - festive comedy. KW - festive play. KW - festive plays. KW - festivity. KW - folly. KW - fools. KW - holiday custom. KW - holiday. KW - imagination. KW - inclusiveness. KW - liberty. KW - misrule. KW - pageantry. KW - play. KW - plays. KW - rituals. KW - romance. KW - saturnalia. KW - saturnalian attitude. KW - saturnalian impulse. KW - seasonal festivals. KW - social occasions. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:451536 AB - 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. "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 This new edition includes a foreword by Stephen Greenblatt, who discusses Barber's influence on later scholars and the recent critical disagreements that Barber has inspired, showing that Shakespeare's Festive Comedy is as vital today as when it was originally published. ER -