Performing Conversion: Cities, Theatre and Early Modern Transformations

This book explores how theatrical practices shaped the multiplying forms of conversion that emerged in early modern Europe. Each chapter focuses on a specific city or selection of cities including Venice, London, Mexico City, Madrid and Berne. Collectively, these studies establish a picture of early modernity as an age teeming with both excitement and anxiety over conversional activities. Considering the commercial theatre that produced professional dramatists such as Lope de Vega and Thomas Middleton, the book surveys a wide variety of kinds of performances that brought theatricality into formative relationships with conversional practices. As a whole, the volume addresses issues of conversion as it pertains to early modern theatre, literature, theology, philosophy, economics, urban culture, globalism, colonialism, trade and cross-cultural exchange.