Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance

Michael Witmore

Published by Cornell University Press 2011

Pretty Creatures

Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance

Michael Witmore

https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801463556

Overview
Contents

About this book

Witmore examines the ways in which children, with their proverbial capacity for spontaneous imitation and their imaginative absorption, came to exemplify the virtues and powers of fiction during the English Renaissance.

Author / Editor information

Michael Witmore is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England and the coeditor of Childhood and Children's Books in Early Modern Europe, 1550-1800.

Reviews

Rebecca Bushnell, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania:

Written in a vivid and engaging style, Pretty Creatures offers a strikingly original perspective on the early modern images of children as both 'artless and artful.' In a fresh approach, Witmore ties the status of the child as a mimic to the Renaissance debates over mimesis. He draws on contemporary theory and a wonderfully diverse set of sources, both visual and textual, to unfold his fascinating argument about children as representative of the agency of fiction.

Julian Yates, author of Error, Misuse, Failure: Object Lessons from the English Renaissance:

In Pretty Creatures, Michael Witmore traces the figure of the child as sign and symptom of the efficacy of Renaissance fictions (plays, royal pageants, spectacles, witch trials). One of the virtues of this powerful book is its sustained regard for all forms of cultural production, enabling readers to trace the contours of intellectual history against the vivid details of everyday practice. Gone is the figure of the child as a sentimentalized icon of innocence to be replaced by a story about the interrelation between magic and science in a pre-Baconian world. Pretty Creatures challenges us to revisit the children who haunt Renaissance drama. That we are now equipped to make sense of these diminutive presences is a measure of the book's success.

Witmore's analysis of the role of children as an agency of fiction breaks new ground, making this book an original, valuable contribution to understanding both the figure of the child during the Renaissance and the Renaissance debate over the nature of mimesis.

The complexity and significance of Witmore's Pretty Creatures belie its title.... This is a book to be read by any scholar of the early modern period, or indeed of any period, interested in the evolving concept of fiction, explored here in a range including civic spectacles, plays written for children’s companies, a Shakespeare play (The Winter’s Tale) and, as an innovative test case, children’s testimonies at witch trials.... It will encourage or require the continued rethinking of the presence of children as performers in much early modern literature.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Note on Modernization Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Ut Pueritas Poesis: The Child and Fiction in the English Renaissance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
2. Animated Children in Elizabeth's Coronation Pageant of 1559 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
3. Phatic Metadrama and the Touch of Irony in English Children's Theater Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
4. Mamillius, The Winter's Tale, and the Impetus of Fiction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
5. The Lies Children Tell: Counterfeiting Victims and Witnesses in Early Modern English Witchcraft Trials and Possessions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 248
Illustrations
- Other: 10 halftones
Keywords: Medieval & Renaissance Studies; Literary Studies

eBook

Published: July 5, 2018
ISBN: 9780801463556