Katrine K. Wong

This book offers a survey of how female and male characters in English Renaissance theatre participated and interacted in musical activities, both inside and outside the contemporary societal decorum. Wong’s analysis broadens our understanding of the general theatrical representation of music, or musical dramaturgy, and complicates the current discussion of musical portrayal and construction of gender during this period. Wong discusses dramaturgical meanings of music and its association with gender, love, and erotomania in Renaissance plays. The negotiation between the dichotomous qualities of the heavenly and the demonic finds extensive application in recent studies of music in early modern English plays. However, while ideological dualities identified in music in traditional Renaissance thinking may seem unequivocal, various musical representations of characters and situations in early modern drama would prove otherwise. Wong, building upon the conventional model of binarism, explores how playwrights created their musical characters and scenarios according to the received cultural use and perception of music, and, at the same time, experimented with the multivalent meanings and significance embodied in theatrical music.

Music and Gender in English Renaissance Drama

C.X. George Wei

Macao, the former Portuguese colony in southeast China from the 1550s until its return to China in 1999, has a long and very interesting history of cultural interaction between China and the West. As an entity with independent political power and a unique social setting and cultural development, the identity of Macao’s people is not only indicative of the legacy and influence of the region’s socio-historical factors and forces, but it has also been altered, transformed and maintained because of the input, action, interaction and stimulation of creative arts and literatures. Held together by racial accommodation and tolerance and active cultural interactions, Macao’s phenomenon can be characterized as hybridization. This book is a presentation of the ongoing hybridization of Macao and is in itself a hybrid, covering a wide range of issues. Putting forward substantial new research findings, the book explores the nature of cultural interaction in Macao, and how the city has been constructed and perceived through literature and other art forms. It is a companion volume to Macao – The Formation of a Global City .

Katrine K. Wong

Books

Your next favorite book is out there