The N Town Plays

Author : Richard Beadle,Alan J. Fletcher
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2008-07-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139827928

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The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre by Richard Beadle,Alan J. Fletcher Pdf

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.

Author : Victor I Scherb,Douglas Sugano
Publisher : Medieval Institute Publications
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2007-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781580444385

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The N-Town Plays by Victor I Scherb,Douglas Sugano Pdf

In the late 1400s in eastern England, a scribe was in the process of compiling a large dramatic manuscript of over two hundred vellum folios. The manuscript contains components of an independent Mary Play, parts one and two of an independent Passion Play and an independent Assumption of Mary Play, as well as ten play subjects that appear in no other English cycles - the killing of Lamech in the Noah Play, the Root of Jesse, the story of Joachim and Anne, the Presentation of Mary in the Temple, the Parliament of Heaven, the Trial of Mary and Joseph, the scene of Mary and the cherry tree in the Nativity Play, the Death of Herod, the scene of Veronica's handkerchief in the Procession to Calvary, and the appearance of the risen Christ to the Virgin Mary in her Assumption Play. This edition acknowledges the N-Town compiler who took plays from various contexts and integrated them into an existing cycle of plays, thus treating the manuscript as if it were a superstructure whose parts could be replaced, renovated, and supplemented without altering the fundamental coherence of the overarching design.

Author : Peter Meredith
Publisher : Longman Publishing Group
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Drama
ISBN : UOM:39015053661677

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The Mary Play from the N. Town Manuscript by Peter Meredith Pdf

The Mary Play is a beautiful and engaging piece of late medieval stagecraft. It is rich in music and spectacle, and is the only English play which deals with the parents of the Virgin Mary and with her early life; the only play which centers on a prayer, the Ave Maria; the only play which in its devotional intensity reflects the central concerns of the late fifteenth century lay piety.

Author : Patrick J. Collins
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 78 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 1979
Category : Art
ISBN : STANFORD:36105037814204

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The N-town Plays and Medieval Picture Cycles by Patrick J. Collins Pdf

Author : Maurice Hussey
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 1957
Category : English drama
ISBN : RUTGERS:39030006574497

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The Chester Mystery Plays by Maurice Hussey Pdf

Author : Theresa Coletti
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2013-11-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780812201642

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Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints by Theresa Coletti Pdf

A sinner-saint who embraced then renounced sexual and worldly pleasures; a woman who, through her attachment to Jesus, embodied both erotic and sacred power; a symbol of penance and an exemplar of contemplative and passionate devotion: perhaps no figure stood closer to the center of late medieval debates about the sources of spiritual authority and women's contribution to salvation history than did Mary Magdalene, and perhaps nowhere in later medieval England was cultural preoccupation with the Magdalene stronger than in fifteenth-century East Anglia. Looking to East Anglian texts including the N-Town Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, and Bokenham's Legend of Holy Women, Theresa Coletti explores how the gendered symbol of Mary Magdalene mediates tensions between masculine and feminine spiritual power, institutional and individual modes of religious expression, and authorized and unauthorized forms of revelation and sacred speech. Using the Digby play Mary Magdalene as her touchstone, Coletti engages a wide variety of textual and visual resources to make evident the discursive and material ties of East Anglian dramatic texts and feminine religion to broader traditions of cultural commentary and representation. In bringing the disciplinary perspectives of literary history and criticism, gender studies, and social and religious history to bear on specific local instances of dramatic practice, Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints highlights the relevance of Middle English dramatic discourse to the dynamic religious climate of late medieval England. In doing so, the book decisively challenges the marginalization of drama within medieval English studies, elucidates vernacular theater's kinship with influential late medieval religious texts and institutions, and articulates the changing possibilities for sacred representation in the decades before the Reformation.

Author : Emma Maggie Solberg
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2018-12-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781501730344

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Virgin Whore by Emma Maggie Solberg Pdf

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.

Author : Christina M. Fitzgerald,John T. Sebastian
Publisher : Broadview Press
Page : 595 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012-12-05
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781554810567

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The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama by Christina M. Fitzgerald,John T. Sebastian Pdf

The past generation has been an extraordinarily active one in medieval drama scholarship; our appreciation of the range of medieval drama has been significantly broadened, and our understanding of certain medieval genres—most notably, biblical drama—has been fundamentally altered. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature has been widely praised for the degree to which it has taken this scholarship into account in its selection of and presentation of medieval plays. Now Broadview launches a new anthology that takes those plays as its base while expanding very substantially beyond them to represent the full range of drama in English (and, where strong connections exist, in French, Latin, Cornish, and Welsh as well) through to 1576. In all, over forty plays are included. Each work has been fully annotated and is prefaced by a substantial introduction. In many cases the language is to some extent modernized in order to make the plays more accessible to readers today.

Author : Penny Granger
Publisher : D. S. Brewer
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Drama
ISBN : UOM:39015080889291

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The N-Town Play by Penny Granger Pdf

First full examination of the N-Town Play, arguing for its reappraisal as a work of private devotion as well as public performance.

Author : Eckehard Simon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1991-01-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780521385145

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The Theatre of Medieval Europe by Eckehard Simon Pdf

Brings together the work of thirteen internationally recognized scholars of early drama to give a comprehensive account of recent findings in the field.

Author : Peter Meredith,Stanley J. Kahrl
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : Bible plays, English
ISBN : UOM:39015012835958

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The N-town Plays by Peter Meredith,Stanley J. Kahrl Pdf

Author : Greg Walker
Publisher : Blackwell Publishing
Page : 630 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2000-10-03
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0631217274

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Medieval Drama by Greg Walker Pdf

This anthology of drama in English contains plays from the late 14th century to the onset of the Renaissance. It brings together selections from all the major dramatic genres to provide a sense of the breadth and depth of medieval dramatic activity.

Author : Stephen Spector
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 413 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0197224113

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The N-town Play by Stephen Spector Pdf

These volumes are one of the four extant Middle English cycles of mystery plays. A collection of unknown origin, N-Town contains forty-one plays, dramatizing divine history from Creation to Doomsday and illustrating ways of reading, supplementing and altering biblical accounts. The collection is rich in textual information testifying about the alteration and expansion of the text. The language of the plays advance knowledge of the history of English. The plays provide instructions in the fundamental elements of medieval Christianity and explain much about forms of consolation and self-fortification that were available in the late Middle Ages.

Author : Clifford Davidson
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0754660524

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Festivals and Plays in Late Medieval Britain by Clifford Davidson Pdf

The most comprehensive survey to date of medieval festival playing in Britain, this study presents an inclusive view of the drama in the British Isles. It offers detailed readings of individual plays-including the little studied Bodley plays, among others - as well as a summary of what is known of their production. Organized around the rituals of the liturgical seasons, the book clarifies the relationship between liturgical feast and dramatic celebration.

Author : Philip Butterworth
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 421 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2022-07-29
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781000610697

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Functions of Medieval English Stage Directions by Philip Butterworth Pdf

When we speak of theatre, we think we know what a stage direction is: we tend to think of it as an authorial requirement, devised to be complementary to the spoken text and directed at those who put on a play as to what, when, where, how or why a moment, action or its staging should be completed. This is the general understanding to condition a theatrical convention known as the 'stage direction'. As such, we recognise that the stage direction is directed towards actors, directors, designers, and any others who have a part to play in the practical realisation of the play. And perhaps we think that this has always been the case. However, the term 'stage direction' is not a medieval one, nor does an English medieval equivalent term exist to codify the functions contained in extraneous manuscript notes, requirements, directions or records. The medieval English stage direction does not generally function in this way: it mainly exists as an observed record of earlier performance. There are examples of other functions, but even they are not directed at players or those involved in creating performance. More than 2000 stage directions from 40 or so plays and cycles have been included in the catalogue of the volume, and over 400 of those have been selected for analysis throughout the work. The purpose of this research is to examine the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. Examples of such functions are largely taken from outdoor scriptural plays. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, medieval history and literature.