Summary: The commedia dell'arte, the improvised Italian theatre that dominated the European stage from 1550 to 1750, is arguably the most famous theatre tradition to emerge from Europe in the early modern period. Its celebrated masks have come to symbolize theatre itself and have become part of the European cultural imagination. Over the past twenty years a revolution in commedia dell'arte scholarship has taken place, generated mainly by a number of distinguished Italian scholars. Their work, in which they have radically separated out the myth from the history of the phenomenon remains, however, largely untranslated into English (or any other language). The present volume gathers together these Italian and English-speaking scholars to synthesize for the first time this research for both specialist and non-specialist readers. The book is structured around key topics that span both the early modern period and the twentieth-century reinvention of the commedia dell'arte.

Contents: 1. Knots and doubleness - the engine of the commedia dell'arte, Ferdinando Taviani. 2. Popular traditions, carnival, dance, Riccardo Drusi. 3. Notebooks, prologues and scenarios, Stefan Hulfeld. 4. Between improvisation and book, Piermario Vescovo. 5. Journeys, Siro Ferrone. 6. France, Virginia Scott. 7. The Iberian Peninsula, Marķa del Valle Ojeda Calvo. 8. German-speaking countries, M. A. Katritzky. 9. Eighteenth-century Russia, Laurence Senelick. 10. England, Robert Henke. 11. Northern Europe, Bent Holm. 12. Commedia dell'Arte and the Church, Bernadette Majorana. 13. Commedia dell'arte and dominant culture, Raimondo Guarino. 14. Iconography of the commedia dell'arte, Renzo Guardenti. 15. Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, Franco Ruffini. 16. Copeau and the work of the actor, Marco Consolini. 17. Staging Gozzi - Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Brecht, Besson, Franco Vazzoler. 18. Staging Goldoni - Reinhardt, Strehler, Erika Fischer-Lichte. 19. Eduardo De Filippo and the mask of Pulcinella, Teresa Megale. 20. Commedia dell'Arte and political theatre, Paolo Puppa. 21. Commedia dell'Arte and experimental theatre, Mirella Schino. 22. Commedia dell'arte in opera and music 1550-1750, Anne MacNeil. 23. From Mozart to Henze, Andrea Fabiano. 24. Commedia dell'arte in dance, Stefano Tomassini. 25. The circus and the artist as Saltimbanco, Sandra Pietrini. (Literature in Context)

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