The Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture) (Paperback)

About the Book

Offers an ecocritical approach to understanding dress in early modern plays and performance

Book Synopsis

This volume posits that clothing in the early modern period was conceived of as the prime interface between the human body and its multiple environments. Both a second skin and a human-made artefact, dress can indeed be considered as the most immediate site for the elaboration of any sort of ecology, in its etymological sense of a 'discourse' of the oikos, or of the place we inhabit. This collection shows how early modern English literature, and drama in particular, interrogates the crucial relationship between humans and the world that surrounds them in its staging of dress. It also argues that the theatrical productions of the time derived much of their creative energy from this process, by which climates and their effects were translated and embodied through dress on the mediating stage. Its various chapters study early modern clothes in their ecosystems and challenge the inside/outside, natural/artificial and body/environment binaries.

Review Quotes

With a keen eye to the plant and animal origins of Renaissance costume, this resplendent collection reveals how the environment is present on stage in the warp and weft of textiles and play-texts. Moving beyond Shakespeare and encompassing fabrics ranging from dirty linen and rags to luxurious furs and silks, the thirteen essays succeed brilliantly in retheorising the playhouse as a site of ecomaterial entanglement. The Ecology of Dress in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries is historical ecocriticism of the finest yarn.--Todd Borlik, Purdue University