Dramma Medioevale Europeo 1997

This is a compilation of contributions to the study of the Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente (1465–1536) which appeared between 2005 and 2015. Entries are grouped under three main headings: Editions and Adaptations, Translations, and Critical Studies. The scholarly interest in the father of the Portuguese theater continues unabated, as it can be seen in the great numbers of scholarly works, both editorial and critical, which appeared in the decade under question. The modest aim of this work is to alert scholars as to which of Gil Vicente’s works have not received adequate critical attention. New names are constantly added to the list of established vicentistas and new ways of looking at the dramatist’s works are introduced.

This book is a study of convent theatre in Italy, an all-female tradition. Widespread in the early modern period, but virtually forgotten today, this activity produced a number of talented dramatists and works worthy of remembrance. Convent authors, actresses and audiences, especially in Tuscan houses, the plays written and produced, and what these reveal about the lives of convent women, are the focus of this book. Beginning with the earliest known performances of miracle and mystery plays (sacre rappresentazioni) in the late fifteenth century, the book follows the development in the convents at the turn of the sixteenth century of spiritual comedy and of a variety of dramatic forms in the seventeenth century. Convent theatre both reflected the high level of literacy among convent women and contributed to it, and it attested to the continuing close contact between the secular world and the convents - even in the Post Tridentine period.