Tudor Theatre: Allegory in the Theatre

Primarily meant to host studies about the drama of the English - and European - Renaissance, as well as the culture in which it is rooted, the THETA series aims to be a forum for exchange and debate. The articles in this volume, which derive from the Seventh Round Table on Tudor Drama held at Tours in 1997, develop theoretical as well as historical ideas in the context of dramatic allegory. Through consideration of problems of staging, they also highlight the dramatic possibilities and effects that performance elicits from the use of such highly popular allegorical devices. The contributions are arranged in roughly chronological order of the plays treated. They emphasize the durability and diversity as well as the ambiguities of the allegorical technique, and give an insight into the difficulty of forcing it into a narrow definition. Consacree a la publication d'etudes sur le theatre de la Renaissance europeenne - et d'abord anglaise - ainsi que sur la culture qui le nourrit, la collection THETA se veut lieu de rencontre et de debat, accueillant sans exclusive toutes les approches. Les articles issus des Actes de la 7e Table Ronde du Theatre Tudor, tenue a Tours en 1997, et qui composent ce volume, developpent des points de vue theoriques tout autant qu'historiques a propos de l'allegorie au theatre. Le recueil, a travers les problemes de mise en scene, donne aussi leur place aux ressources et aux attraits que la representation tire des procedes allegoriques extremement populaires. Suivant approximativement la chronologie des pieces traitees, les differentes contributions soulignent la longevite, la diversite de meme que les ambiguites de la technique de l'allegorie; rendant ainsi difficile toute tentative de reduction a une fonction specifique.