This is a truly paradigm-shifting study that reads a key text in Latin Humanist studies as the culmination, rather than an early example, of a tradition in university drama. It persuasively argues against the common assumption that there was no "drama" in the medieval universities until the syllabus was influenced by humanist ideas, and posits a new way of reading the performative dimensions of fourteenth and fifteenth-century university education in, for example, Ciceronian tuition on epistolary delivery. David Bevington calls it "an impressively learned discussion" and commends the sophistication of its use of performativity theory.
An examination of if and how medieval romance was performed, uniquely uniting the perspective of a scholar and practitioner. Although English medieval minstrels performed gestes, a genre closely related to romance, often playing the harp or the fiddle, the question of if, and how, Middle English romance was performed has been hotly debated. Here, the performance tradition is explored by combining textual, historical and musicological scholarship with practical experience from a noted musician. Using previously unrecognised evidence, the author reconstructs a realistic model of minstrel performance, showing how a simple melody can interact with the text, and vice versa. She argues that elements in Middle English romance which may seem simplistic or repetitive may in fact be incomplete, as missing an integral musical dimension; metrical irregularities, for example, may be relics of sophisticated rhythmic variation that make sense only with music. Overall, the study offers both a more accurate comprehension of minstrel performance, and a deeper appreciation of the romances themselves. Linda Marie Zaerr is Professor of Medieval Studies at Boise State University.
Although medieval English music has been relatively neglected in comparison with repertoire from France and Italy, there are few classical musicians today who have not listened to the thirteenth-century song ‘Sumer is icumen in’, or read of the achievements and fame of fifteenth-century composer John Dunstaple. Similarly, the identification of a distinctively English musical style (sometimes understood as the contenance angloise) has been made on numerous occasions by writers exploring the extent to which English ideas influenced polyphonic composition abroad. Angel song: Medieval English music in history examines the ways in which the standard narratives of English musical history have been crafted, from the Middle Ages to the present. Colton challenges the way in which the concept of a canon of English music has been built around a handful of pieces, composers and practices, each of which offers opportunities for a reappraisal of English musical and devotional cultures between 1250 and 1460.
Medieval English Drama provides a fresh introduction to the dramatic and festive practices of England in the late Middle Ages. The book places particular emphasis on the importance of the performance contexts of these events, bringing to life a period before permanent theatre buildings when performances took place in a wide variety of locations and had to fight to attract and maintain the attention of an audience. Showing the interplay between dramatic and everyday life, the book covers performances in convents, churches, parishes, street processions and parades, and in particular distinguishes between modes of outdoor and indoor performance. Katie Normington aids the reader to a fuller understanding of these early English dramatic practices by explaining the significance of the place of performance, the particularities of spectatorship for each event and how the conventions of the form of drama were manipulated to address its reception. Audiences considered range from cloistered members, congregations and parish members to urban citizens, nobles and royalty. Undergraduate students of literature of this period will find this an approachable and illuminating guide.
The study of medieval literature has experienced a revolution in the last two decades, which has reinvigorated many parts of the discipline and changed the shape of the subject in relation to the scholarship of the previous generation. 'New' texts (laws and penitentials, women's writing, drama records), innovative fields and objects of study (the history of the book, the study of space and the body, medieval masculinities), and original ways of studying them (the Sociology of the Text, performance studies) have emerged. This has brought fresh vigour and impetus to medieval studies, and impacted significantly on cognate periods and areas. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English brings together the insights of these new fields and approaches with those of more familiar texts and methods of study, to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of medieval literature today. It also returns to first principles in posing fundamental questions about the nature, scope, and significance of the discipline, and the directions that it might take in the next decade. The Handbook contains 44 newly commissioned essays from both world-leading scholars and exciting new scholarly voices. Topics covered range from the canonical genres of Saints' lives, sermons, romance, lyric poetry, and heroic poetry; major themes including monstrosity and marginality, patronage and literary politics, manuscript studies and vernacularity are investigated; and there are close readings of key texts, such as Beowulf, Wulf and Eadwacer, and Ancrene Wisse and key authors from Ælfric to Geoffrey Chaucer, Langland, and the Gawain Poet.
First published in 1998, this valuable reference work offers concise, expert answers to questions on all aspects of life and culture in Medieval England, including art, architecture, law, literature, kings, women, music, commerce, technology, warfare and religion. This wide-ranging text encompasses English social, cultural, and political life from the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth century to the turn of the sixteenth century, as well as its ties to the Celtic world of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the French and Anglo-Norman world of the Continent and the Viking and Scandinavian world of the North Sea. A range of topics are discussed from Sedulius to Skelton, from Wulfstan of York to Reginald Pecock, from Pictish art to Gothic sculpture and from the Vikings to the Black Death. A subject and name index makes it easy to locate information and bibliographies direct users to essential primary and secondary sources as well as key scholarship. With more than 700 entries by over 300 international scholars, this work provides a detailed portrait of the English Middle Ages and will be of great value to students and scholars studying Medieval history in England and Europe, as well as non-specialist readers.
ROMARD is an academic journal devoted to the study and promotion of Medieval and Renaissance drama in Europe. Previously published under the title of Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama (RORD), the journal has been in publication since 1956. ROMARD is published annually at the University of Western Ontario. Manuscripts are submitted to the Editor, Mario Longtin, via email at [email protected]. For further details, please visit the ROMARD website at www.romard.org. Special Issue: Showcasing Opportunities Co-Edited by Jill Stevenson and Mario Longtin This volume consists of fourteen short essays, all tackling different aspects of drama observed through a variety of disciplines, theoretical perspectives, and/or methodologies. We asked contributors to begin their pieces by introducing a new critical approach, a new methodology, a specific problem in the field, or an operative link between disciplines that fosters productive connections. In some cases, this framing concept introduces a new concept, methodology, or theoretical approach to the field of early drama studies. In other instances, authors invite readers to reconsider an existing topic or theme from a new perspective. We further asked contributors to select one specific example from early drama and to analyze it critically, but briefly, in order to illustrate their framing concept. We encouraged authors to be bold and, in some cases, to leave questions unresolved. Consequently, this special issue of ROMARD aims to advance the study of early drama by capturing research and ideas in the making.
Historically and broadly defined as the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance, the Middle Ages encompass a millennium of cultural conflicts and developments. A large body of mystery, passion, miracle and morality plays cohabited with song, dance, farces and other public spectacles, frequently sharing ecclesiastical and secular inspiration. A Cultural History of Theatre in the Middle Ages provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of theatre between 500 and 1500, and imaginatively pieces together the puzzle of medieval theatre by foregrounding the study of performance. Each of the ten chapters of this richly illustrated volume takes a different theme as its focus: institutional frameworks; social functions; sexuality and gender; the environment of theatre; circulation; interpretations; communities of production; repertoire and genres; technologies of performance; and knowledge transmission.
The Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature offers a new, inclusive, and comprehensive context to the study of medieval literature written in the English language from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Middle Ages. Utilising a Trans-European context, this volume includes essays from leading academics in the field across linguistic and geographic divides. Extending beyond the traditional scholarly discussions of insularity in relation to Middle English literature and ‘isolationism’, this volume: Oversees a variety of genres and topics, including cultural identity, insular borders, linguistic interactions, literary gateways, Middle English texts and traditions, and modern interpretations such as race, gender studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonialism. Draws on the combined extensive experience of teaching and research in medieval English and comparative literature within and outside of anglophone higher education and looks to the future of this fast-paced area of literary culture. Contains an indispensable section on theoretical approaches to the study of literary texts. This Companion provides the reader with practical insights into the methods and approaches that can be applied to medieval literature and serves as an important reference work for upper-level students and researchers working on English literature.
Every known society wears some form of clothing. It is central to how we experience our bodies and how we understand the sociocultural dimensions of our embodiment. It is also central to how we understand works of literature. In this innovative study, Brazil demonstrates how medieval writers use clothing to direct readers’ and spectators’ awareness to forms of embodiment. Offering insights into how poetic works, plays, and devotional treatises target readers’ kinesic intelligence—their ability to understand movements and gestures—Brazil demonstrates the theological implications of clothing, often evinced by how garments limit or facilitate the movements and postures of bodies in narratives. By bringing recent studies in the field of embodied cognition to bear on narrated and dramatized interactions between dress and body, this book offers new methodological tools to the study of clothing.
