Aristotle's neat compartmentalization notwithstanding (Poetics ch. 9) historians and
playwrights have both been laying claim to representations of the past - arguably since
Antiquity but certainly since the Renaissance. At a time when narratology challenges
historiographers to differentiate their emplotments (White) from literary inventions this
thirteen-essay collection takes a fresh look at the production of historico-political knowledge
in literature and the intricacies of reality and fiction. Written by experts who teach in
Germany Austria Russia and the United States the articles provide a thorough interpretation
of early modern drama (with a view to classical times and the 19th century) as an ideological
platform that is as open to royal self-fashioning and soteriology as it is to travestying and
subverting the means and ends of historical interpretation. The comparative analysis of
metapoetic and historiosophic aspects also sheds light on drama as a transnational phenomenon
demonstrating the importance of the cultural net that links the multifaceted textual examples
from France Russia England Italy and the Netherlands.
