The Saint Play in Medieval Europe

The Saint Play in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Clifford Davidson
Publisher: Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This illustrated volume intelligently provides a much-needed introduction to what may have been the most popular variety of drama in the Middle Ages: the saint play. A comprehensive and collaborative survey is provided with an emphasis on interdisciplinary study rather than only literary analysis. While the saint play in England is the connecting theme of the volume, the papers explore other topics necessary to fully understand the culture of the saint play, such as the genre as manifest on the continent, including plays in French, Italian, and German.

The Saint Play in Medieval Europe

The Saint Play in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Clifford Davidson
Publisher: Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
This illustrated volume intelligently provides a much-needed introduction to what may have been the most popular variety of drama in the Middle Ages: the saint play. A comprehensive and collaborative survey is provided with an emphasis on interdisciplinary study rather than only literary analysis. While the saint play in England is the connecting theme of the volume, the papers explore other topics necessary to fully understand the culture of the saint play, such as the genre as manifest on the continent, including plays in French, Italian, and German.

The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe

The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe PDF Author: Lynette R. Muir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521542104
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book presents a detailed survey and analysis of the surviving corpus of biblical drama from all parts of medieval Christian Europe. Over five hundred plays from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries are examined, in a wide-ranging discussion which makes available the full scope of this important part of theatre history. The volume is specially organised to provide a complete overview of major aspects of medieval biblical theatre, including the theatrical community of both audience and players; the major plays and cycles; and the legacy of medieval biblical theatre. The book also includes valuable appendices with information on the liturgical calendar, processions, and the Mass and the Bible.

Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama

Saints and the Audience in Middle English Biblical Drama PDF Author: Chester Norman Scoville
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802089441
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
Saints and heroes were often central characters in Middle English biblical plays, although scholarship has tended to focus more on the villainous than the virtuous. In this study, Chester Scoville examines how medieval playwrights portrayed saints and how they used them to convey feelings of social virtue, devotion, compassion and community in the audience. Although looking also at performance practices, costume, gesture and scenert, the main emphasis is on language and rhetoric in biblical drama and the position of saints lying between the earthly and ultimate community. Four `role models' are jeld up for close examination: Thomas the Doubter, Mary Magdalene, Jospeh and Paul.

A Companion to the Medieval Theatre

A Companion to the Medieval Theatre PDF Author: Ronald W. Vince
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Vince has provided a useful and, for the most part, usable reference work. His introduction should be required reading for anyone approaching medieval theater. Choice Scholars increasingly see medieval theatre as a complex and vital performance medium related more closely to political, religious, and social life than to literature as we know it. Reflecting the current interest in performance, A Companion to the Medieval Theatre presents 250 alphabetically arranged entries offering a panoramic view of European and British theatrical productions between the years 900 and 1550. The volume features 30 essays contributed by an international group of specialists and includes many shorter entries as well as systematic cross-referencing, a chronology, a bibliography, and a full complement of indexes. Major entries focus on the theatres of the principal linguistic areas (the British Isles, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and Eastern Europe), and on dramatic forms and genres such as liturgical drama, Passion and saint plays, morality plays, folk drama, and Humanist drama. Other articles examine costume, acting, pageantry, and music, and explore the theatrical dimension of courtly entertainment, the dance, and the tournament. Short entries supply information on over one hundred playwrights, directors, actors and antiquarians whose contributions to the theatre have been documented. This informative guide brings new depth to our appreciation of the richness and color of medieval public entertainments and the symbolism and pageantry that were a part of daily life in the Middle Ages. Designed to appeal to general reader, this volume is also an attractive choice for libraries serving students and scholars of theatre history, English and European literatures, medieval history, cultural history, drama, and performance.

The Renaissance of the Saints After Reform

The Renaissance of the Saints After Reform PDF Author: Gina M. Di Salvo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192865919
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
The age of miracles was not yet past on the Shakespearean stage. In the first book-length study of the English saint play across the Reformation divide, The Renaissance of the Saints after Reform recovers the surprisingly long theatrical life of the saints from a tenth-century monastery to the Restoration stage. Through a reassessment of archival records of performance and religious change, this book challenges the established history of the saint play as a product of medieval devotional culture that ended with the national conversion to Protestantism during the Reformation. Not only did saints in performance frequently diverge from the narratives of devotional literature during the Middle Ages but also saints made a spectacular reappearance in the theatre of the early modern era. In the rupture between those two eras, the English church separated itself from the Cult of the Saints, and saints disappeared from public view until sainthood transformed from a matter of theology into a matter of theatricality. Early modern saint plays document a post-Reformation culture committed to saints-but not all saints. Certain ancient martyrs and British saints returned to the liturgical calendar in the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. This limited inventory performed an initial de-Catholicization of these saints, but it did not recover their lives. Instead, the theatre produced new lives of the saints for the English public. A period of experimentation with saints and devils in the 1590s was followed by unprecedented innovation throughout the Stuart era. This book traces the transformation of sainthood in early modern drama from ambiguous supernatural association and negotiated patronage to a renaissance of miraculous theatricality and sacred place-making. By excavating saints in plays by Shakespeare, Heywood, Dekker, Massinger, and Rowley as well as plays authored by relatively unknown dramatists, this book reconfigures how we think about the legacy of late medieval religious culture, the impact of Reformation change on literary texts and social practices, and the development of English theatre and drama.

Holy Harlots in Medieval English Religious Literature

Holy Harlots in Medieval English Religious Literature PDF Author: Juliette Vuille
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 184384589X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
First comprehensive investigation of the major significance of female sinners turned saints in medieval literature.

Performing Bodies in Pain

Performing Bodies in Pain PDF Author: M. Carlson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230111483
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This text analyzes the cultural work of spectacular suffering in contemporary discourse and late-medieval France, reading recent dramatizations of torture and performances of self-mutilating conceptual art against late-medieval saint plays.

Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995)

Routledge Revivals: Medieval France (1995) PDF Author: William W. Kibler
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351665669
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1078

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Book Description
First published in 1995, Medieval France: An Encyclopedia is the first single-volume reference work on the history and culture of medieval France. It covers the political, intellectual, literary, and musical history of the country from the early fifth to the late fifteenth century. The shorter entries offer succinct summaries of the lives of individuals, events, works, cities, monuments, and other important subjects, followed by essential bibliographies. Longer essay-length articles provide interpretive comments about significant institutions and important periods or events. The Encyclopedia is thoroughly cross-referenced and includes a generous selection of illustrations, maps, charts, and genealogies. It is especially strong in its coverage of economic issues, women, music, religion and literature. This comprehensive work of over 2,400 entries will be of key interest to students and scholars, as well as general readers.

Virgin Whore

Virgin Whore PDF Author: Emma Maggie Solberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501730355
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
In Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality. Although history is narrated as a progressive loss of innocence, the Madonna has grown purer with each passing century. Looking to a period before the idea of her purity and virginity had ossified, Solberg uncovers depictions and interpretations of Mary, discernible in jokes and insults, icons and rituals, prayers and revelations, allegories and typologies—and in late medieval vernacular biblical drama. More unmistakable than any cultural artifact from late medieval England, these biblical plays do not exclusively interpret Mary and her virginity as fragile. In a collection of plays known as the N-Town manuscript, Mary is represented not only as virgin and mother but as virgin and promiscuous adulteress, dallying with the Trinity, the archangel Gabriel, and mortals in kaleidoscopic erotic combinations. Mary’s "virginity" signifies invulnerability rather than fragility, redemption rather than renunciation, and merciful license rather than ascetic discipline. Taking the ancient slander that Mary conceived Jesus in sin as cause for joyful laughter, the N-Town plays make a virtue of those accusations: through bawdy yet divine comedy, she redeems and exalts the crime. By revealing the presence of this promiscuous Virgin in early English drama and late medieval literature and culture—in dirty jokes told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, Malory’s Arthurian romances, and the double entendres of the allegorical Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn—Solberg provides a new understanding of Marian traditions.

Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England

Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England PDF Author: Matthew Steggle
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317150791
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This book establishes new information about the likely content of ten lost plays from the period 1580-1642. These plays’ authors include Nashe, Heywood, and Dekker; and the plays themselves connect in direct ways to some of the most canonical dramas of English literature, including Hamlet, King Lear, The Changeling, and The Duchess of Malfi. The lost plays in question are: Terminus & Non Terminus (1586-8); Richard the Confessor (1593); Cutlack (1594); Bellendon (1594); Truth's Supplication to Candlelight (1600); Albere Galles (1602); Henry the Una (c. 1619); The Angel King (1624); The Duchess of Fernandina (c. 1630-42); and The Cardinal's Conspiracy (bef. 1639). From this list of bare titles, it is argued, can be reconstructed comedies, tragedies, and histories, whose leading characters included a saint, a robber, a Medici duchess, an impotent king, at least one pope, and an angel. In each case, newly-available digital research resources make it possible to interrogate the title and to identify the play's subject-matter, analogues, and likely genre. But these concrete examples raise wider theoretical problems: What is a lost play? What can, and cannot, be said about objects in this problematic category? Known lost plays from the early modern commercial theatre outnumber extant plays from that theatre: but how, in practice, can one investigate them? This book offers an innovative theoretical and practical frame for such work, putting digital humanities into action in the emerging field of lost play studies.