The Staging Of Religious Drama In Europe In The Later Middle Ages

This volume brings together a wide selection of primary source materials from the theatrical history of the Middle Ages. The focus is on Western Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of markedly Renaissance forms in Italy. Early sections of the volume are devoted to the survival of Classical tradition and the development of the liturgical drama of the Roman Catholic Church, but the main concentration is on the genesis and growth of popular religious drama in the vernacular. Each of the major medieval regions is featured, while a final section covers the pastimes and customs of the people, a record of whose traditional activities often only survives in the margins of official recognition. The documents are compiled by a team of leading scholars in the field and the over 700 documents are all presented in modern English translation.

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.

Aspects of medieval theatre examined for reflection of contemporary life. The essays in this volume explore ways in which plays and public spectacles mirrored the beliefs and values of the late medieval world. Topics covered include seasonal festivals, trade gilds, stagecraft, and the role played by themunicipal governments in fostering and controlling dramatic productions. The geographic range takes in all western Europe, with particular consideration of the connections between the various medieval European dramatic traditions. Inter-disciplinary in approach, perspectives range from the history of theatre to cultural and political history and literary criticism. There is particular emphasis on the real advances that can be made in expanding knowledge of medieval theatre through research in local and regional archives. ALAN E. KNIGHT is professor emeritus of French at the Pennsylvania State University. Contributors: ALEXANDRA F. JOHNSTON, LYNETTE R. MUIR, PAMELA SHEINGORN, R.B. DOBSON, GERARD NIJSTEN, CLIFFORD DAVIDSON, WIM HÜSKEN, STEPHEN SPECTOR, ALAN E. KNIGHT

Examines vernacular saint plays in French, Italian, and English from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. This book focuses on the genre of hagiographic drama as an expression of popular religion and popular culture in the Middle Ages, serving as a test of modern theories pertaining to popular culture.

The religious medieval drama, like the Church which produced it, was international. As such, from its earliest beginnings in the tenth-century Quem quaeritis to the thirteenth-century Ludi Paschales and Passion Plays, it exhibits a cultural and thematic unity binding the various plays: a thematic unity from the fabric of Christian thought, and a cultural unity from the fact that these productions, at least up to the end of the thirteenth century, generally share a technical-philological medium: the Latin language. In later centuries, this religious drama expressed in the vernacular remained an act of faith; its purpose being to strengthen the faith of the worshippers and to express in visible, dramatic terms the facts and values of Christian belief. These essays were, in their original form, addressed to the third annual conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton. The work of international authorities on the medieval drama, they span many centuries and bear witness to the growth of the religious dramatic form and of the dramatic movement and temper of the liturgy in which that form finds its origin. Omer Jodogne establishes a difference, on the aesthetic level, between dramatic works and their theatrical performance by pointing out that the surviving texts, whether they were meant for reading or for a theatrical performance, reproduce only what was said on the stage, and, succinctly, what was done. Wolfgang Michael suggests that the first medieval drama did not originate in a slow growth from the Easter trope Quem quaeritis but was rather an original creation of the author or authors of the Concordia Regularis. He indicates that subsequent dramatic endeavors in their slow process of change and expansion reflect the working of tradition rather than an original spirit and form. Sandro Sticca examines the creation of the first Passion Play and shows that Christ's passion became increasingly popular in the tenth century, and that the new forces which allowed a more eloquent and humane visualization and description of Christ's anguish first appeared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He also refutes the traditional view that the Planctus Mariae is the germinal point of the Latin Passion Play. V. A. Kolve seeks to account for certain central facts about Everyman which have never had close critical attention. He analyzes the Biblical and Patristic references within which the story is shaped and which are central to the understanding of other actions and to determining the meaning of the play. Glynn Wickham, after exploding on the evidence of reference alone the old categorizing of English Saint Plays as by-products or late developments of Mysteries and Moralities, turns to a critical discussion of the three surviving texts of English Saint Plays and of their original staging by means of diagrammatic illustrations providing a vivid visualization of their performance. William Smolden takes an unaccustomed approach to the controversial question of the origins of the Quem quaeritis. He maintains that when musical evidence is called on, it brings about, on a number of occasions, a confutation of the theory of a "textual" writer. From a detailed consideration of the two earliest Quem quaeritis he feels convinced that the place of origin of the trope was the Abbey of St. Martial of Limoges.

"Illustrating this thesis through an examination of the plays themselves, Staging Faith explores how different modes of production resulted in different types of dramatic organization, different relationships between the audience and the dramatic action, and how dramatists exploited the symbolic and affective potential of different types of settings, props, and dramatic actions. The simple place-and-scaffold play accommodated an oppositional structure, one that could be embodied spatially in the arrangement of the scaffolds and further articulated in processional action. The symbolic images in these dramas often have a strongly devotional character and attempt to unite the play's audience around a central devotional object or scene."--BOOK JACKET.