Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson
Author: W. David Kay
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 249
Release: 1995-03-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1349237787

This concise biography surveys Jonson's career and provides an introduction to his works in the context of Jacobean politics, court patronage and his many literary rivalries. Stressing his wit and inventiveness, it explores the strategies by which he attempted to maintain his independence from the conditions of theatrical production and from his patrons and introduces new evidence that, despite his vaunted classicism, he repeatedly appropriated the matter or forms of other English writers in order to demonstrate his own artistic superiority.

Ben Jonson's Antimasques

Ben Jonson's Antimasques
Author: Lesley Mickel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2018-12-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0429864442

First published in 1999, this volume examines how under the patronage of James I and then Charles I, Ben Jonson wrote no less than 28 court masques. Paying particular attention to the antimasque, Lesley Mickel discusses in detail those court entertainments which contributed significantly to the genre’s evolution and development. Her approach is innovative in that she examines these court entertainments in relation to Jonson’s poetry and dramatic works. This reveals some idea of the way in which Jonson perceived the relationship between satire and panegyric, as well as highlighting the related, if oppositional, views of state power which he expresses in the Roman plays and in the masques.

A Book of Masques

A Book of Masques
Author: Gerald Eades Bentley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 1967-04-02
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780521054553

The English court masque was one of the most extravagant and spectacular forms of entertainment ever produced, the most important period being between 1600 and 1640 when the writers included some of the best-known poets and dramatists of the age. This volume, first published in 1967, was the first selection of masques to be published in England in the twentieth century. It consists of fourteen masques, each specially edited with an introduction and commentary by a different scholar, including Ben Jonson, James Shirley, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Campion, Francis Beaumont, William Browne, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Nabbes and William Davenant. Professor Gerald Eades Bentley examines the masque as Jonson conceived it and the clash that took place between Jonson and his collaborator as designer, Inigo Jones. There is also a final essay on the influence of the masque on the drama of the period. A group of 48 plates has been prepared many of them reproducing designs by Inigo Jones.

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson
Author: Rosalind Miles
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1351998080

Though he is one of the undisputed giants of English literature, Ben Jonson is known to most people only as the author of one or two masterly plays which regularly appear in the drama repertory. He is much less well-known for his whole oeuvre, which encompasses poetry, criticism, masque-making, and a lifetime of linguistic and lexicographical study. In this book, first published in 1990, the author presents a comprehensive critical study of the whole of Jonson’s output from his earliest beginnings through to the final achievement. Looking at every word he ever wrote, in drama, masque, poetry, philosophy and literary criticism, the author reveals an interesting and varied picture of Jonson. This title will be of interest to students of English literature and Renaissance drama.

Ben Jonson: Authority: Criticism

Ben Jonson: Authority: Criticism
Author: R. Dutton
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 277
Release: 1996-03-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 023037249X

Ben Jonson: Authority: Criticism is the first book-length study of Jonson's literary criticism, and examines the ways that criticism defines his unprecedented role as a professional author. Each chapter explores a different facet: 'The Lone Wolf' looks at Jonson's role in creating a critical discourse to respond to a new literary market-place; 'Poet and Critic' explores the relationship between his 'creative' and 'critical' writing; 'Poet and State' traces his accommodations as an author with censorship and other forms of authority; 'The Laws of Poetry' relates his appeals to classical precedent to his insecurity in a world where literary conditions were very different from those of ancient Greece and Rome; 'Jonson and Shakespeare' examines the old supposed rivalry as evidence of competing definitions of authorship. Throughout Richard Dutton suggests how Jonson's criticism set the terms for the profession of letters in England for more than a century. Finally an appendix provides a representative selection of Jonson's critical work.

Ben Jonson in Context

Ben Jonson in Context
Author: Julie Sanders
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2010-06-03
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0521895715

This collection highlights exciting new areas of research related to Ben Jonson, including book history, social history and cultural geography.

Ben Jonson and Envy

Ben Jonson and Envy
Author: Lynn S. Meskill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2009-04-16
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0521517435

This book examines the centrality of envy in the works of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's greatest literary rival.

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson
Author: Jonas A. Barish
Publisher:
Total Pages: 202
Release: 1963
Genre:
ISBN:

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson
Author: Ben Jonson
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1970-01-01
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780300012590

The Renaissance court masque, traditionally an entertainment of music, dancing, pageantry, and spectacular scenic effects was transformed by Ben Jonson into a serious mode of literary expression. Because its flexibility provided a forum for his dramatic imagination, Jonson was able to resolve and transcend the satiric vision that was in many ways the substance of his drama. He instructed as well as applauded his courtly audience and, with the aid of the great theatrical designer Inigo Jones, brought unity to the diverse elements of the masque, infusing them with a moral and poetic life. In early 1969, Yale University Press published The Complete Masques, the first one-volume edition and the most carefully edited and annotated text available. A modernized version, the 576 page Complete Masques includes the faithful reprinting of Jonson’s own glosses and notes, translated and annotated, as well as explanatory notes which offer the most detailed critical commentary ever undertaken. This abridged collection contains the most important of the works included in the large edition, and Mr. Orgel’s introduction which discusses Jonson’s development of the masque in relation to Inigo Jones’s development of the illusionistic stage. Mr. Orgel is associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.