The World of Christopher Marlowe

Rok: 2006
ISBN: 9780805080360
OKCZID: 110168132

Hodnocení: 4.0 / 5 (6 hlasů)

Anotace

“Riggs brings it all together brilliantly, assembling all evidence of Marlowe’s life and adding to that a wider and deeper focus . . . Superb.”—Los Angeles TimesThe World of Christopher Marlowe is the story of the troubled genius, raised in the stench and poverty of Canterbury’s abbatoirs, who revolutionized English drama and poetry, challenging and scandalizing English society before he was murdered in his prime. David Riggs, a prizewinning Elizabethan scholar, evokes the atmosphere and texture of Marlowe’s life from his birth to his ties to the London underworld and his triumphs onstage. It was a time when nothing was sacred, and no one was secure. Espousing sexual freedom and atheism, Marlowe proved too great a threat to the religious and political leaders of the time, who were struggling to maintain their tenuous grip on power. In the wake of his untimely death, Marlowe would leave behind a shadowed legacy of undeniable genius. This magisterial work of reconstruction illuminates his enigmatic, contradictory, and glorious life with immense richness.“The book engrossingly narrates the circumstantial details of Marlowe’s life against a richly detailed backdrop. Riggs writes with scholarly yet conversational elegance . . . Enjoyably provides fresh insights into the life and work of this important poet and playwright.” —San Francisco Chronicle“A worthy book . . . if you want an exhaustive account of the life and times, Riggs is your man.”—The New York Times Book Review David Riggs is the Mark Pigott OBE Professor of Humanities at Stanford University. His previous books include Ben Jonson: A Life. He lectures regularly at leading universities in the United States and Great Britain, and has written articles for The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Shakespeare Quarterly, among other periodicals. The World of Christopher Marlowe is the story of the troubled genius who revolutionized English drama and poetry, challenging and scandalizing English society before he was murdered in his prime. David Riggs, a prizewinning Elizabethan scholar, evokes the atmosphere and texture of Marlowe's life in Elizabethan England, from his birth (in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare's) to his ties to the London underworld and his triumphs on the stage.Though he was the greatest dramatist the English had ever known, Marlowe lived on the margins of London life, among prostitutes and thieves, and attracted a new class of theatergoers with a repertory that spoke to their most urgent concerns—class conflict, erotic desire, religious dissent. Among the scenes of conflict and intrigue that inspired him, Marlowe would find his way into the spy rings that dominated the Elizabethan state, and their influence would loom over his life and work from the time he left Cambridge Unversity. His undercover missions brought him into contact with Roman Catholic conspirators who were plotting to kill the queen, while his private deliberations led him to an idea even more threatening to the monarchy—atheism. No one knows to this day whether his murder was the act of a sovereign power or the result of a tavern brawl. Over a period of eight years, Christopher Marlowe's masterpieces—Dr. Faustus, Tamburlaine the Great, and The Jew of Malta—transformed the Elizabethan stage into a place of astonishing creativity. Marlowe's brief life was enigmatic, contradictory, and glorious—and this magisterial work of reconstruction illuminates it with immense richness. "If you want an exhaustive account of the life and times [of Christopher Marlowe], Riggs is your man."—John Simon, The New York Times Book Review (cover review) "There is today no finer guide to Marlowe's world than David Riggs."—Daniel Swift, The Nation "Riggs supplements our paltry factual knowledge about Marlowe by describing his various milieux. A good and reliable book."—The Washington Post "The World of Christopher Marlowe brings it all together brilliantly, assembling all evidence of Marlowe's life and adding to that wider and deeper focus. What Riggs has done, and done so well, is to place Marlowe squarely in the Elizabethan world, giving us everything we need to know about people, places, and institutions, and from which we can justly infer a full story . . . Riggs has long since earned his laurels as a scholar-critic with Shakespeare's Heroical Histories and Ben Jonson: A Life. Here he does a superb job, bringing together a treasury of pertinent information about Marlowe and his age, all the while maintaining a smooth narrative flow. Scholarly apparatus—notes, bibliography, index, and illustrations—is at once thorough and unobtrusive. This book should be the definitive account of Marlowe and his world for a long time to come."—George Garrett, Los Angeles Times "The book engrossingly narrates the circumstantial details of Marlowe's life against a richly detailed backdrop. Riggs writes with scholarly yet conversational elegance . . . The World of Christopher Marlowe enjoyably provides fresh insights into the life and work of this important poet and playwright."—Alexandra Yurkovsky, San Francisco Chronicle "Marlowe was both our first great poetic dramatist and a defiant rebel against social norms of religion, sexuality, and the law. Riggs tells his enthralling story with imagination, verve, and profound scholaship."—Stanley Wells, author of Shakespeare: A Life in Drama "David Riggs's fine, full-blooded biography provides an extraordinarily insightful image of both sides of Christopher Marlowe. We are drawn deep into a murky world of swindlers, counterfeiters, loan sharks, traitors, spies, double agents, and murderers—the sordid realm in which Marlowe fashioned his life and met his violent death. But we are also given a richly detailed account of the education of one of England's greatest playwrights. In Riggs's capacious vision there is room both for Marlowe the doomed antihero and Marlowe the brilliant, learned, visionary poet."—Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University, author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare "David Riggs's new biography of Christopher Marlowe is meticulously researched, full of new insights, and presents a compelling and compassionate portrait of this troubled genius."—Charles Nicholl, author of The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe "David Riggs's superb evocation of Marlowe's fugitive existence in the literary and espionage underworlds of Elizabethan England succeeds not only in coloring the disruptive social climate of the times, but in placing Marlowe as the unorthodox outsider he was in almost every aspect of his life . . . Riggs has delivered the most resourceful book on Marlowe to date, combining impeccable scholarship with a biographer's flair for period detail. It is a work likely to remain the definitive biography."—Jeremy Reed, The Times (London) "[This is a] highly satisfying biography of the first great English playwright, who was also a 'landmark

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