Roger D. Sell – författare

Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volumeto explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent didplaywrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, orfailing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likelyto weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences?And how might such bondings or oppositions among spectators have tallied withthe community-making or -breaking on stage? Chapters in Part One respond toone or more of these questions by reassessing general period trends in censorship,theatre attendance, forms of patronage, playwrights’ professional and linguisticnetworks, their use of music, and their handling of ethical controversies.In Part Two, responses arise from detailed re-examinations of particular playsby Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Cary, Webster, Middleton,Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. Both Parts cover a full range of early-Stuarttheatre settings, from the public and popular to the more private circumstancesof hall playhouses, court masques, women’s drama, country-house theatricals,and school plays. And one overall finding is that, although playwrights frequentlystaged or alluded to communal conflict, they seldom exacerbated such divisivenesswithin their audience. Rather, they tended toward more tactful modes ofaddress (sometimes even acknowledging their own ideological uncertainties) sothat, at least for the duration of a play, their audiences could be a communitywithin which internal rifts were openly brought into dialogue.

The fruit of intensive collaboration among leading international specialists on the literature, religion and culture of early modern England, this volume examines the relationship between writing and religion in England from 1558, the year of the Elizabethan Settlement, up until the Act of Toleration of 1689. Throughout these studies, religious writing is broadly taken as being 'communicational' in the etymological sense: that is, as a medium which played a significant role in the creation or consolidation of communities. Some texts shaped or reinforced one particular kind of religious identity, whereas others fostered communities which cut across the religious borderlines which prevailed in other areas of social interaction. For a number of the scholars writing here, such communal differences correlate with different ways of drawing on the resources of cultural memory. The denominational spectrum covered ranges from several varieties of Dissent, through via media Anglicanism, to Laudianism and Roman Catholicism, and there are also glances towards heresy and the mid-seventeenth century's new atheism. With respect to the range of different genres examined, the volume spans the gamut from poetry, fictional prose, drama, court masque, sermons, devotional works, theological treatises, confessions of faith, church constitutions, tracts, and letters, to history-writing and translation. Arranged in roughly chronological order, Writing and Religion in England, 1558-1689 presents chapters which explore religious writing within the wider contexts of culture, ideas, attitudes, and law, as well as studies which concentrate more on the texts and readerships of particular writers. Several contributors embrace an inter-arts orientation, relating writing to liturgical ceremony, painting, music and architecture, while others opt for a stronger sociological slant, explicitly emphasizing the role of women writers and of writers from different sub-cultural backgrounds.

Up until the mid-1980s most pragmatic analysis had been done on spoken language use, considerably less on written use, and very little at all on literary activity. This has now radically changed. ‘Pragmatics’ could be informally defined as the study of relationships between language and its users. This volume, first published in 1991, seeks to reposition literary activity at the centre of that study. The internationally renowned contributors draw together two main streams. On the one hand, there are concerns which are close to the syntax and semantics of mainstream linguistics, and on the other, there are concerns ranging towards anthropological linguistics, socio- and psycholinguistics. Literary Pragmatics represents an antidote to the fragmenting specialization so characteristic of the humanities in the twentieth century. This book will be of lasting value to students of linguistics, literature and society. Roger D. Sell discusses the reissue of Literary Pragmatics here: http://www.routledge.com/articles/roger_d._sell_discusses_the_reissue_of_literary_pragmatics/

Up until the mid-1980s most pragmatic analysis had been done on spoken language use, considerably less on written use, and very little at all on literary activity. This has now radically changed. ‘Pragmatics’ could be informally defined as the study of relationships between language and its users. This volume, first published in 1991, seeks to reposition literary activity at the centre of that study. The internationally renowned contributors draw together two main streams. On the one hand, there are concerns which are close to the syntax and semantics of mainstream linguistics, and on the other, there are concerns ranging towards anthropological linguistics, socio- and psycholinguistics. Literary Pragmatics represents an antidote to the fragmenting specialization so characteristic of the humanities in the twentieth century. This book will be of lasting value to students of linguistics, literature and society.