
A Mirror to Nature
Transformations in Drama and Aesthetics 1660-1732
Rose A. Zimbardo(Author)
The University Press of Kentucky
Published on 15. July 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-8131-5539-5 (ISBN)
Description
In this provocative study Rose Zimbardo examines a crucial revolution in aesthetics that took place in the late seventeenth century and that to this day dominates our response to literature. Although artists of that time continued to follow the precept "imitate nature," that nature no longer corresponds to the earlier understanding of the term. What had been in essence an allegorical mode came to be a literal one.
Focusing on the drama of the period as an exemplary form, Zimbardo shows how it moved from depicting a metaphysical reality of idea to portraying an inner reality of individual experience. But drama is constrained in expressing the inner experience since its medium is limited to human action. The novel arose to replace drama as the popular literary form, Zimbardo argues, because it could better and more freely convey man's inner world and thereby imitate the "new" nature.
The study concluded that the changes which took place in drama during this period and which led to the invention of the novel resulted not from any "change of heart" or sensibility but from a fundamental change in the understanding of the nature which art was thought to imitate. Neither the drama of the 1690s nor the early novel, Zimbardo finds, was in the least "sentimental."
A Mirror to Nature brings a new critical perspective to bear on literary developments at the end of the seventeenth century -- one that must be considered by critics and historians of the period.
Focusing on the drama of the period as an exemplary form, Zimbardo shows how it moved from depicting a metaphysical reality of idea to portraying an inner reality of individual experience. But drama is constrained in expressing the inner experience since its medium is limited to human action. The novel arose to replace drama as the popular literary form, Zimbardo argues, because it could better and more freely convey man's inner world and thereby imitate the "new" nature.
The study concluded that the changes which took place in drama during this period and which led to the invention of the novel resulted not from any "change of heart" or sensibility but from a fundamental change in the understanding of the nature which art was thought to imitate. Neither the drama of the 1690s nor the early novel, Zimbardo finds, was in the least "sentimental."
A Mirror to Nature brings a new critical perspective to bear on literary developments at the end of the seventeenth century -- one that must be considered by critics and historians of the period.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lexington
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
331 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8131-5539-5 (9780813155395)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Rose A. Zimbardo is professor of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has written extensively on the drama of the seventeenth century.