Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage

Fencing, Form and Cognition on the Early Modern Stage reveals an underexplored archive of Italian, English and German fencing texts, which were designed explicitly to teach tempo and judgement. This intervention in Shakespeare and Jonson scholarship provides critical new insights into the plots, pacing and characterisation of drama and attends to the ethical and pedagogical work displayed and accomplished by fencing and dramatic devices. It yields a robust theory of active waiting and brings the imbrications of appropriate timing and ethical decision-making to the fore.

Author Biography

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).