English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages
Title | English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Hardin Craig |
Publisher | Greenwood |
Pages | 476 |
Release | 1978 |
Genre | Drama |
ISBN |
English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages
Title | English Religious Drama of the Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Louis Francois Cazamian |
Publisher | |
Pages | |
Release | 1955 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages
Title | The Staging of Religious Drama in Europe in the Later Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Meredith |
Publisher | Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University |
Pages | 332 |
Release | 1983 |
Genre | Christian drama |
ISBN |
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre
Title | The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Beadle |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 402 |
Release | 2008-07-10 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1139827928 |
The drama of the English Middle Ages is perennially popular with students and theatre audiences alike, and this is an updated edition of a book which has established itself as a standard guide to the field. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition continues to provide an authoritative introduction and an up-to-date, illustrated guide to the mystery cycles, morality drama and saints' plays which flourished from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. The book emphasises regional diversity in the period and engages with the literary and particularly the theatrical values of the plays. Existing chapters have been revised and updated where necessary, and there are three entirely new chapters, including one on the cultural significance of early drama. A thoroughly revised reference section includes a guide to scholarship and criticism, an enlarged classified bibliography and a chronological table.
Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages
Title | Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | O. B. Hardison Jr. |
Publisher | JHU Press |
Pages | 247 |
Release | 2019-12-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1421430878 |
Originally published in 1965. The European dramatic tradition rests on a group of religious dramas that appeared between the tenth and twelfth centuries. These dramas, of interest in themselves, are also important for the light they shed on three historical and critical problems: the relation of drama to ritual, the nature of dramatic form, and the development of representational techniques. Hardison's approach is based on the history of the Christian liturgy, on critical theories concerning the kinship of ritual and drama, and on close analysis of the chronology and content of the texts themselves. Beginning with liturgical commentaries of the ninth century, Hardison shows that writers of the period consciously interpreted the Mass and cycle of the church year in dramatic terms. By reconstructing the services themselves, he shows that they had an emphatic dramatic structure that reached its climax with the celebration of the Resurrection. Turning to the history of the Latin Resurrection play, Hardison suggests that the famous Quem quaeritis—the earliest of all medieval dramas—is best understood in relation to the baptismal rites of the Easter Vigil service. He sets forth a theory of the original form and function of the play based on the content of the earliest manuscripts as well as on vestigial ceremonial elements that survive in the later ones. Three texts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries are analyzed with emphasis on the change from ritual to representational modes. Hardison discusses why the form inherited from ritual remained unchanged, while the technique became increasingly representational. In studying the earliest vernacular dramas, Hardison examines the use of nonritual materials as sources of dramatic form, the influence of representational concepts of space and time on staging, and the development of nonceremonial techniques for composition of dialogue. The sudden appearance of these elements in vernacular drama suggests the existence of a hitherto unsuspected vernacular tradition considerably older than the earliest surviving vernacular plays.
The English Mystery Plays
Title | The English Mystery Plays PDF eBook |
Author | Rosemary Woolf |
Publisher | Univ of California Press |
Pages | 452 |
Release | 1980-01-01 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780520040816 |
This important new study of the English mystery plays has a twofold purpose. It is concerned to investigate the antecedents of the four extant cycles and to demonstrate the dramatic value of the plays themselves The opening and concluding chapters place the plays in their historical context by discussing on the one hand the emergence and achievements of genuine religious drama (as opposed to liturgical drama) in the twelfth century and on the other the changes in taste that threw the plays into disrepute in the sixteenth century. The man part of the book analyzes the plays in detail, considering the iconographic and theological traditions that guided the dramatists in their treatment of biblical subject-matter, and also looking at the Continental drama of the time to find out what other dramatic possibilities were open to writers in the Middle Ages. -- From publisher's description.
European Drama of the Early Middle Ages
Title | European Drama of the Early Middle Ages PDF eBook |
Author | Richard Axton |
Publisher | [Pittsburgh] : University of Pittsburgh Press |
Pages | 240 |
Release | 1975 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN |