Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London brings together a group of essays from across multiple fields of study that examine the socio-cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pageantry in sixteenth and seventeenth-century London.

This collection engages with modern interest in the spectacle and historical performances of pageantry and entertainments, including royal entries, progresses, coronation ceremonies, Lord Mayor's Shows, and processions. Through a discussion of the extant texts, visual records, archival material, and emerging projects in the digital humanities, the chapters elucidate the forms in which the period itself recorded its public rituals, pageantry, and ephemeral entertainments. The diversity of approaches contained in these chapters reflects the collaborative nature of pageantry and civic entertainments, as well as the broad socio-cultural resonances of this form of drama, and in doing so offers a study that is multi-faceted and wide-ranging, much like civic performance itself.

Ideal for scholars of Early Modern global politics, economics, and culture; literary and performance studies; print culture; and the digital humanities, Civic Performance casts a new lens on street pageantry and entertainments in the historically and culturally significant locus of Early Modern London.

About the Author

J. Caitlin Finlayson is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA.

Amrita Sen is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of UGC-HRDC at the University of Calcutta, India.

Book Information
ISBN 9781032174884
Author J. Caitlin Finlayson
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 308g