Becoming Criminal

Bryan Reynolds is an associate professor of drama at the University of California, Irvine.

• Contents: Preface Acknowledgments ONE State Power, Cultural Dissidence, Transversal Power TWO Becoming Gypsy, Criminal Culture, Becoming Transversal THREE Communal Departure, Criminal Language, Dissident Consolidation FOUR Social Spatialization, Criminal Praxis, Transversal Movement FIVE Antitheatrical Discourse, Transversal Theater, Criminal Intervention Notes Bibliography Index

A very useful introduction for those interested in the ways in which the Renaissance is frequently introduced to today's students... [Reynolds] is unusually attuned to the ways in which acts of speech depend upon their context and their assumed audience, and his analysis impressively focuses upon the cultural and literary importance of writing outside the canon. His book never fails to be interesting. -- Dennis D. Kezar Tennessean [Bryan Reynolds] frames his cross-disciplinary inquiry with a concept of 'transversal theory,' which offers a spatially organized understanding of how subjects empower themselves through performance (social, criminal, or theatrical) and so not only defy official ideology but also transform the conditions of their own perception and experience... Especially valuable here is Reynolds's analysis of canting language as an 'official' language used by all members of a substantially unified criminal subculture that emerged in the 1520's, continued beyond the Puritan's rise to power in the early 1640's, and was commodified and fetishized by official culture. Studies in English Literature 2003 A valuable contribution both to the study of early modern criminality and to theorizing the period's social and political relations more broadly. -- Tanya Pollard Renaissance Quarterly 2004 Becoming Criminal's transversal theory performs a valuable service in reconceptualizing early modern English criminality and linking it to some of the period's most important institutions and discourses. -- Stephen Cohen Sixteenth Century Journal