Theatre of the Book 1480-1880

Theatre of the Book is an account of the entangled histories of print and the theatre in Europe between the Renaissance and the late nineteenth century: a history of European dramatic publication (providing comparative and historical perspective to the growing field of textual studies); an examination of the creation of the modern notion of text and performance; and a comparative genealogy of ideas about theatrical and textual reception. It shows that, far
from being marginal to Renaissance dramatists, the printing press had an essential role to play in the birth of the modern theatre, crucially shaping the normative conception of ‘theatre’ as a distinct
aesthetic medium and of drama as a distinct narrative form, helping to forge a theatricalist aesthetics in opposition to ‘the book’. Treating playtexts, engravings, actor portraits, notation systems, and theatrical ephemera at once as material objects and expressions of complex cultural formations, Theatre of the Book examines the European theatre’s continual refashioning of itself in the world of print.

Author Biography

Julie Stone Peters is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University NY. Her publications include Congreve, the Drama, and the Printed Word (Standford UP 1990) and, with Andrea Wolper, Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (Routledge 1995).