Early 1960s, Yorkshire. Farm labourer George is cast in an amateur staging of the York Mystery Plays. His world is shaken when he falls for metropolitan assistant director John and the two men embark on a clandestine affair. Peter Gill's influential play is not only a finely drawn love story; it is also a touching reflection on the rival forces of family, class, and the origins and ownership of art. The York Realist was premiered by the English Touring Theatre at The Lowry, Salford Quays in November 2001; it moved to the Bristol Old Vic that same year and, in 2002, to the Royal Court Theatre, London. The play was revived by the Donmar Warehouse, London, in February 2018. Winner of the London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play. 'As a love story, The York Realist is riveting and heart-rendering... Gill is always terrifically perceptive about male tenderness. The personal and political are subtly united in a study of English masculinity, class and culture. Such outstanding work.' Independent on Sunday 'Sensationally fine and poignant.' Evening Standard 'It has the Lawrentian qualities of emotional intelligence, raw honesty and fascination with the intersection of class and sex... It is about the way the English, however hard they try, can never finally escape their origins. But, far from being emotionally conservative, it is adventurous, witty and fresh... The play comes like a rare blast of reality.' Guardian

This volume offers 22 of the central pageants which make up York's famous Corpus Christi cycle. The York cycle is the oldest and best-known of the English mystery cycles, and its depth and scope are reflected in the selection printed here. The shape of the cycle was governed by subject matter of enduring spiritual significance, both to its contemporary audience and in later literary and artistic tradition, and the selection reflects these concerns. Included are plays on the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, and the Last Judgement. The Passion sequence has been expanded by six of the eight plays generally attributed to the great poetic dramatist known as the York Realist: the authentic text of these plays is not otherwise available in paperback. As well as providing detailed annotation, this edition offers an introduction which examines the history of the cycle and discusses the immensely popular modern productions in York and elsewhere. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Honorable Mention, Barnard Hewitt Award from the American Society for Theater Research Explores the intersection and history of American literary realism and the performance of spiritual and racial embodiment. Recovering a series of ecstatic performances in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American realism, Realist Ecstasy travels from camp meetings to Native American ghost dances to storefront church revivals to explore realism’s relationship to spiritual experience. In her approach to realism as both an unruly archive of performance and a wide-ranging repertoire of media practices—including literature, photography, audio recording, and early film—Lindsay V. Reckson argues that the real was repetitively enacted and reenacted through bodily practice. Realist Ecstasy demonstrates how the realist imagining of possessed bodies helped construct and naturalize racial difference, while excavating the complex, shifting, and dynamic possibilities embedded in ecstatic performance: its production of new and immanent forms of being beside. Across her readings of Stephen Crane, James Weldon Johnson, and Nella Larsen, among others, Reckson triangulates secularism, realism, and racial formation in the post-Reconstruction moment. Realist Ecstasy shows how post-Reconstruction realist texts mobilized gestures—especially the gestures associated with religious ecstasy—to racialize secularism itself. Reckson offers us a distinctly new vision of American realism as a performative practice, a sustained account of how performance lives in and through literary archives, and a rich sense of how closely secularization and racialization were linked in Jim Crow America.

A Naive Realist Theory of Colour defends the view that colours are mind-independent properties of things in the environment. Keith Allen argues that a naive realist theory of colour best explains how colours appear to perceiving subjects, and that this view is not undermined by our modern scientific understanding of the world.

The realist theory of international relations is based on a particularly gloomy set of assumptions about universal human motives. Believing people to be essentially asocial, selfish, and untrustworthy, realism counsels a politics of distrust and competition in the international arena. What Moves Man subjects realism to a broad and deep critique. Freyberg-Inan argues, first, that realist psychology is incomplete and suffers from a pessimistic bias. Second, she explains how this bias systematically undermines both realist scholarship and efforts to promote international cooperation and peace. Third, she argues that realism's bias has a tendency to function as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it nurtures and promotes the very behaviors it assumes predominate human nature. Freyberg-Inan concludes by suggesting how a broader and more complex view of human motivation would deliver more complete explanations of international behavior, reduce the risk of bias, and better promote practical progress in the conduct of international affairs.

The British `New Wave' of dramatists, actors and directors in the late 1950s and 1960s created a defining moment in post-war theatre. British Realist Theatre is an accessible introduction to the New Wave, providing the historical and cultural background which is essential for a true understanding of this influential and dynamic era. Drawing upon contemporary sources as well as the plays themselves, Stephen Lacey considers the plays' influences, their impact and their critical receptions. The playwrights discussed include: * Edward Bond * John Osborne * Shelagh Delaney * Harold Pinter

The first study of the career of Peter Gill, among the most significant voices of contemporary theatre, whose writing and direction represent one of the most compelling, provocative and influential bodies of work in the last fifty years.