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Performing Economic Thought: English Drama and Mercantile Writing 1600-1642
ISBN: 9780748697113
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Edinburgh University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Literary Studies (European) Literary Theory and Cultural Studies;

This study examines the structural similarities between English mercantile treatises and drama c1600-1642. Bradley D. Ryner analyses the representational conventions of plays and mercantile treatises written between the chartering of the English East India Company in 1600 and the closing of the public playhouses at the outset of the English Civil War in 1642. He shows that playwrights' manipulation of specific elements of theatrical representation - such as metaphor, props, dramatic character, stage space, audience interaction, and genre - exacerbated the tension between the aspects of the world taken into account by a particular representation and those aspects that it neglects.