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Four of Ben Jonson's plays are examined in this volume: two are his major works and two from his later oeuvre. The Alchemist (1610) is a major satire on folly and greed, brilliantly plotted and dazzling in its use of language. Bartholomew Fair (1614), possibly Jonson's greatest achievement, reveals a panoramic depiction of London society. The New Inn (1629) and A Tale of a Tub (1633) suggest a different Jonson, exploring new forms and writing from a profoundly modified perspective. In The New Inn, a romantic comedy overlaid with an atmospheric melancholy and ethical urgency, Jonson engages seriously for the first time with the conventions of non-satiric comedy. A Tale of a Tub, a riotous farce set in the early years of Queen Elizabeth, is now widely regarded as a nostalgic Jonsonian pastiche of Elizabethan popular drama. In recent criticism, Jonson's later career has been undergoing considerable reassessment, and this edition is the first that attempts to take this new view of Jonson into account. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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This is an OCR edition without illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Published by: Gay and Bird in 1900 in 85 pages; Subjects: Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Drama; ... Read more

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A bibliographic study of the Jonson folios, 1616-31-1640.

THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY:Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Part of the "English Dramatist" series, this book studies the works of Ben Jonson. It focuses on the Jonson's plays in performance including his Elizabethan comedies, his tragedy "Sejanus", and his masques, which throw into relief his better-known works such as "Volpone" and "The Alchemist". ... Read more

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In this book an attempt is made to describe and explain what is probably the innermeaning of one of the most interesting and from a literary point of view valuable of Ben Jonson's later topical plays"The Staple of News". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great scholarship, written with wit.
As a student of Prof. Boehrer, some years back, I heard portions of this book while he was working on it. His writing is tight with fact and ideas and sharpened by exquisite irony of language. This book starts being witty at the title. Palatability increases thereafter. ... Read more

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The challenge to the audience in Jonson's major comedies is usually seen as an extension of the provocative techniques of English Morality drama. In this lucid and penetrating study, Professor Duncan aims to supplement that view by suggesting a more sophisticated precedent for Jonson's methods in the practice of 'oblique teaching', which Erasmus and More developed out of their admiration for the Greek author Lucian. Jonson shows that stage-comedy is not as incompatible with the techniques of 'Menippean' non-dramatic satire as has often been thought. More generally, what is called here his 'art of teasing' places him in the centre of a long line of Christian humanist writers - stretching from Erasmus and More to Milton and Swift - who used fiction to educate their public through devious processes of moral and intellectual testing. ... Read more

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Why do we value literature so? Many would say for the experience it brings us. But what is it about that experience that makes us treasure certain writings above others? Stephen Booth suggests that the greatest appeal of our most valued works may be that they are, in one way or another, nonsensical. He uses three disparate textsthe Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's epitaphs on his children, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Nightto demonstrate how poetics triumphs over logic in the invigorating mental activity that enriches our experience of reading. Booth presents his case in a book that is crisply playful while at the same time thoroughly analytical. He demonstrates the lapses in logic and the irrational connections in examples of very different types of literature, showing how they come close to incoherence yet maintain for the reader a reliable order and purpose. Ultimately, Booth argues, literature gives us the capacity to cope effortlessly with, and even to transcend, the complicated and demanding mental experiences it generates for us.This book is in part a witty critique of the trendsold and newof literary criticism, written by an accomplished and gifted scholar. But it is also a testimony to the power of the process of reading itself. Precious Nonsense is certain to bring pleasure to anyone interested in language and its beguiling possibilities. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A dazzling experiment in literary analysis
Honesty requires a disclaimer.Booth is a friend and colleague.But I would react similarly if I didn't know the author.If there were six stars, I would award them to Precious Nonsense.Booth takes familiar textsthat seem all too clear and obvious and makes us see a multitude of thingsgoing on beneath their surfaces.His discoveries are startling andsometimes you want to argue with him, but because he puts his cards on thetable he makes argument possible.What he shows demonstrates thedifference between great prose and verse and ordinary writing, and revealsthe similarity between the operation of literary art and that of music. Booth is phenomenally sensitive and deeply learned, and he has a terrificmemory.A bonus is his style: he , in making us see how much goes on insuch art that we are never is clear, convesatonal, and often funny,Thisis a revolutionary book. ... Read more

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Critical Essays on British LiteratureJames Nagel, Series Editor, University of GeorgiaG. K. Halls three series of critical essays give comprehensive coverage of major authors worldwide and throughout history.The full range of literary traditions and schools is represented.Each new volume is carefully conceived and developed to fill a gap in the literary criticism available today.Volume editors are established authorities on the lives, works, and critical receptions of their subjects.They are uniquely qualified to ensure the spectrum of critical controversies, trends, and techniques inspired by their subjects in their own countries and abroad, in their own eras and today.Each volume features:an introduction which provides the reader with a lucid overview of criticism from its beginningsilluminating controversies, evaluating approaches, and sorting out the schools of thought the most influential reviews and the best of reprinted scholarly essaysa section devoted exclusively to reviews and reactions by the subjects contemporariesoriginal essays, new translations, and revisions commissioned especially for the seriespreviously unpublished materialssuch as interviews, lost letters, and manuscript fragments a bibliography of the subjects writings and interviews a name and subject indexA volume of essays on Ben Jonson offers a rare opportunity for historical perspective on criticism itself.Critical Essays on Ben Jonson therefore pairs modern commentaries with brief early ones on the same works and issues.Because he succeeded as an author so early in the history of that profession, and continues to win attention as both an aesthetic and a political writer, this volume can provide evaluations of Jonson from his own time that compare instructively with the best produced by the modern academic system.The essays are written by distinguished commentators at both ends of the chronological range, from the 16th to the 20th centuries.Together they provide the best early case study of English literary criticism, the clearest evidence of the purposes for which Renaissance literature was produced and the principles by which it was judged, and superb and varied examples of the ways we are using and understanding that literature now. ... Read more

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1873. Volume One of Three. Edited by Lt. Colonel Francis Cunningham. Dramatist, poet, scholar and writer of court masques, Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure during the reign of King James I. Jonson was known as an avid scholar of Latin and Greek, and his mastery of the classics, the high-spirited buoyancy of his plays and the brilliance of his language have earned him a reputation as one of the great playwrights in English literature. Jonson was appointed court poet in 1605, and became a writer of court masques-elaborate spectacles that involved music, dancing, and pageantry. Contents of the First Volume: Dedication; Memoirs of Jonson; Proofs of Jonson's Malignity; Characters of Jonson; Ancient Commendatory Verses; Every Man in His Humour; Every Man Out of His Humour; Cynthia's Revels; or, The Fountain of Self-Love; The Poetaster; or, His Arraignment; Sejanus, His Fall; Volpone; or, The Fox; and Epiccene; or, The Silent Woman. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. Other volumes in this set are ISBN(s): 1417944684, 1417944692. ... Read more

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1870 edition by Albert J. Crocker and Brothers, London. ... Read more