Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage

Dori Coblentz is Lecturer in Technical Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She specializes in early modern English drama, digital pedagogy, and the history of fencing. She has published on the ways in which early moderns generated and transmitted practical knowledge about time in “Artificiall force and sleight': Tempo and Dissimulation in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier” (Italian Studies, 2018) and 'Killing Time in Titus Andronicus: Temporality, Rhetoric, and the Art of Defence' (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2015). She also holds a Master at Arms certification with a concentration in historical fencing from Sonoma State University and has written on seventeenth-century Italian rapier curriculum in her co-authored fencing manual, Fundamentals of Italian Rapier: A Modern Manual for Teachers and Students of Historical Fencing (SKA Swordplay Books, 2018).

Through insightful close-readings of plays we don’t associate with fencing, Dori Coblentz reveals how dramatic plots replicate the temporal rhythm and movement patterns of the sport. Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage is an important book not only for readers interested in the history of sport, but for those seeking to understand the complex temporality of early modern plays.

• Introduction1. The "maister of al artificiall force and sleight": Castiglione’s literary tempo2. Arden of Faversham: Tempo and Judgement on the English Stage3. Exercises in Judgement4. Killing Time in Titus Andronicus5. Taking Time for Love in As You Like It6. Wasting Time with Puritans in Bartholomew FairCoda