ABSTRACT

Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre provides a comprehensive examination of this aesthetic theory. The author investigates this aesthetic history as a form of artistic creation, philosophical investigation, a way of representing and manipulating ideas about gender and a way of acknowledging, reinforcing and making a critique of social values for the still and moving, the permanent and elapsing.
The book's analysis covers the entire seventeenth-century with chapters on the work of Ben Jonson, John Milton, the pamphletheatre, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh and Jeremy Collier and will be of interest to scholars in the areas of literary and performance studies.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

chapter |9 pages

Prologue

Making sense

chapter |29 pages

1 Permanently moving

Ben Jonson and the design of a lasting performance

chapter |23 pages

2 Predominantly still

John Milton and the sacred persuasions of performance

chapter |24 pages

3 Theatrically pressed

Pamphletheatre and the performance of a nation

chapter |26 pages

4 Decidedly moving

Aphra Behn and the staging of paradoxical pleasures

chapter |22 pages

5 Perpetually stilled

Jeremy Collier and John Vanbrugh on bonds, women, and soliloquies

chapter |8 pages

Epilogue

Making space