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Palgrave Macmillan

Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture

Authority and Obedience

  • Book
  • © 1997

Overview

Authors:
  1. Mark Thornton Burnett
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Part of the book series: Early Modern Literature in History (EMLH)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Introduction

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 1-13

  3. Apprenticeship and Society

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 14-53

  4. Crafts and Trades

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 54-78

  5. Carnival, the Trickster and the Male Domestic Servant

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 79-117

  6. Women, Patriarchy and Service

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 118-154

  7. The Noble Household

    • Mark Thornton Burnett
    Pages 155-191

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 192-225
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Keywords

About this book

Drawing upon archival material as well as the drama, popular verse and pamphlets, this book reads representations of masters and servants in relation to key Renaissance preoccupations. Apprentices, journeymen, male domestic servants, maidservants and stewards, Burnett argues, were deployed in literary texts to address questions about the exercise of power, social change and the threat of economic upheaval. In this way, writers were instrumental in creating servant 'cultures', and spaces within which forms of political resistance could be realized.

Reviews

'...an impressive work which sifts through a wealth of material...the arguments he advances about what the master-servant relations reveal about early modern English society's attitudes toward class, power, and sexuality make this work [incisive and useful to students of the Renaissance]...his treatment of masters and servants in early modern British culture is...quite masterful.' - Julie H. Kim, Early Modern Literary Studies

'...our most compelling study yet of the ways in which service was represented in the cultural documents of early modern England.' - Douglas Bruster, Shakespeare Quarterly

About the author

MIKE THORNTON BURNETT

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