The Italian Tragedy in the Renaissance: Cultural Realities and Theatrical Innovations

This book is about the Renaissance revitalization of classical drama. Using a cultural and a theatrical approach, it shows how Italian playwrights made ancient tragedy relevant to their audiences. The book challenges the traditional critical approach to the Italian Renaissance tragedy as a mere literary work, and calls attention to the complementary function of the theatrical text, which is 'reconstructed' from the stage directions embedded in the discourse of the characters.