Newest research into drama and performance of the Middle Ages and Tudor period. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic religious plays , and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The papers in this volume explore richly interlocking topics. Themes of royalty and play continue from Volume 43. We have the first in-depth examination of the employment of the now-famous Black Tudor trumpeter, John Blanke, at the royal courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. An entertaining survey of the popular European game of blanket-tossing accompanies the translation of a raucous, sophisticated, but surprisingly humane Dutch rederijkers farce. The Towneley plays remain fertile ground for further research, and this blanket-tossing farce illuminates a key scene of the well-known Second Shepherd's Play. New exploration of a colloquial reference to 'Stafford Blue' in another Towneley pageant, Noah, not only enlivens the play's social context but contributes to important current re-thinking of the manuscript's date. Two papers bring home the theatrical potential of food and eating. We learn how the Tudor interlude Jacob and Esau dramatises the preparation and provision of food from the Genesis story. Serving and eating meals becomes a means of social, theological, and theatrical manipulation. Contrastingly, in the N. Town Last Supper play and a French convent drama, we see how the bread of Passover, the Last Supper, and the Mass could be evoked, layered and shared in performance. In both these plays the audiences' experiences of theatre and of communion overlap and inform each other.

Introduces Skelton and his work to readers unfamiliar with the poet, gathers together the vibrant strands of existing research, and opens up new avenues for future studies. John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences. This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. SEBASTIAN SOBECKI is Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen; JOHN SCATTERGOOD is Professor (Emeritus) of Medieval and Renaissance English at Trinity College, Dublin. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton,A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite

One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context. Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This exciting new collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insightsinto manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including the fruits of the most recent,ground-breaking findings. It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the twenty-first century. Dr Liz Herbert McAvoy is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University. Contributors: Denise M. Baker, Alexandra Barratt, Marleen Cre, Elisabeth Dutton,Vincent Gillespie, Cate Gunn, Ena Jenkins, E.A. Jones, Liz Herbert McAvoy, Laura Saetveit Miles, Kim M. Philips, Elizabeth Robertson,Sarah Salih, Annie Sutherland, Diane Watt, Barry Windeatt.

New essays demonstrate Gower's mastery of the three languages of medieval England, and provide a thorough exploration of the voices he used and the discourses in which he participated. John Gower wrote in three languages - Latin, French, and English - and their considerable and sometimes competing significance in fourteenth-century England underlies his trilingualism. The essays collected in this volume start from Gower as trilingual poet, exploring Gower's negotiations between them - his adaptation of French sources into his Latin poetry, for example - as well as the work of medieval translators who made Gower's French poetry availablein English. "Translation" is also considered more broadly, as a "carrying over" (its etymological sense) between genres, registers, and contexts, with essays exploring Gower's acts of translation between the idioms of varied literary and non-literary forms; and further essays investigate Gower's writings from literary, historical, linguistic, and codicological perspectives. Overall, the volume bears witness to Gower's merit and his importance to English literary history, and increases our understanding of French and Latin literature composed in England; it also makes it possible to understand and to appreciate fully the shape and significance of Gower's literary achievement and influence, which have sometimes suffered in comparison to Chaucer. ELISABETH DUTTON is Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Contributors: Elisabeth Dutton, Jean Pascal Pouzet, Ethan Knapp, Carolyn P. Collette,Elliot Kendall, Robert R. Edwards, George Shuffleton, Nigel Saul, David Carlson, Candace Barrington, Andreea Boboc, Tamara F. O'Callaghan, Stephanie Batkie, Karla Taylor, Brian Gastle, Matthew Irvin, Peter Nicholson, J.A. Burrow,Holly Barbaccia, Kim Zarins, Richard F. Green, Cathy Hume, John Bowers, Andrew Galloway, R.F. Yeager, Martha Driver

The ludic element of drama in the Middle Ages - or drama with early subject matter - is here to the fore. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. This edition combines, perhaps unexpectedly, royalty and games. Games of all kinds, from jousting and "Christmas games" to those usually associated with children, are shown, it is suggested, to be more than they at first appear. Apparently run-of-the-mill entertainments, when presented to the court by the Londoners, by the court to a visiting emperor , or by the retainers of royalty and nobility to the general public for commercial gain, turn out to have unexpected political resonances; while the potential underlying sadism of children's games gains a horrific immediacy when diverted to the torturing of Christ. Even today, the musical SIX says a great deal more about royalty and role-playing than initially might appear, especially when set against eye-witness accounts of the first meeting of Anna of Cleves with Henry VIII, and what modern novelists have made of it . In the process we learn a great deal more about the detail of these games, from the maskerie costumes of James VI and Anna of Denmark to the elaborate fantasy challenges of the jousters in 1400/1401, which incidentally suggest that fourteenth-century court culture, whose language was Anglo-French, is a major missing link in the history of what is usually treated as purely English literature. Contributors: Philip Bennett, Philip Butterworth, Sarah Carpenter, Elisabeth Dutton, James Forse, Gordon Kipling, Michael Pearce, Meg Twycross.

Essays on the performance of drama from the middle ages, ranging from the well-known cycles of York to matter from Iran. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The articles here focus on civic theatre and display. Chester, York, Durham and Newcastle, and London. Practicalities are to the fore: what the Drawers of Dee actually did, how the actors in the York Corpus Christi Play knewwhat time it was, the difficulties presented to London pageantry by unauthorised house-extensions and horse-droppings. Even the stately entertainments of a royal tour by James VI & I featured (in Newcastle, of course) negotiationover the monopoly on coal disguised as a historical event in a play about King Alfred and Canute. Ranging further afield is an introduction to the living tradition of Iranian mystery plays, whose history and development have somethought-provoking parallels with those of medieval waggon plays in the West. Finally, the director and producer discuss their 2019 production of John Redford's Wit and Science by Edward's Boys, the first to be played by aboys' company since the sixteenth century.

Essays on aspects of early drama. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. The articles in this fortieth volume engage with the key communities for early theatre: royalty, city and household, and religious institutions. Topics include the Royal Entry of Elizabeth Woodville into Norwich (1469); Henry VIII's Robin Hood entertainment for Catherine of Aragon; the sun's contribution to stage effects in the York Corpus Christi Play: the engagement with local worthies in Mankind; and the convent drama of Huy, in the Low Countries. Contributors: Aurelie Blanc, Philip Butterworth, Clare Egan, John Marshall, Olivia Robinson, Michael Spence, Meg Twycross.

Essays on the performance of drama from the Middle Ages, ranging from the well-known cycles of York to matter from Iran. Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays. Theatrical performance is central to the groups and communities discussed in this volume, and to their particular and local expressions of faith. The articles presented explore the drama of a variety of different communities from religious orders and houses, through local, medieval and post-medieval lay communities, to contemporary worshippers. Contributors examine complex relationships between theatrical performance and faith, understanding religious theatre as a mode of worship and a method of exploring belief, as well as a site for the study of synchronous and asynchronous connections and fractures within communities. Particular topics addressed include the fragments of play-scripts surviving from the monastery at Mont-St-Michel; the Barking Abbey Easter celebrations; and how the sixteenth-century community which owned the surviving copy of the Towneley plays might have understood them in relation to their own faith. The volume is completed with an exploration of traditional Iranian religious theatre from an ethnographic perspective, in a bid to uncover and understand its very particular effects on the contemporary communities who perform and attend it in the twenty-first century. ELISABETH DUTTON and OLIVA ROBINSON run the Medieval Convent Drama project, based at the University of Fribourg and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which provides the impetus for this special issue of Medieval English Theatre. Contributors: Aurelie Blanc, Eleanor Lucy Deacon, George Gandy, Camille Marshall, James Stokes

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

One of the most important medieval writers studied in historical and literary context. Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth/early fifteenth-century anchoress and mystic, is one of the most important and best-known figures of the Middle Ages. Her Revelations, intense visions of the divine, have been widely studied and read; the first known writings of an English woman, their influence extends over theology and literature. However, many aspects of both her life and thought remain enigmatic. This exciting collection offers a comprehensive, accessible coverage of the key aspects of debate surrounding Julian. It places the author within a wide range of contemporary literary, social, historical and religious contexts, and also provides a wealth of new insights into manuscript traditions, perspectives on her writing and ways of interpreting it, building on the work of many of the most active and influential researchers within Julian studies, and including the fruits of the most recent, ground-breaking findings. It will therefore be a vital companion for all of Julian's readers in the twenty-first century. Dr LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY is Senior Lecturer in Gender in English and Medieval Studies at Swansea University. CONTRIBUTORS: KIM M. PHILLIPS, CATE GUNN, ALEXANDRA BARRATT, DENISE M. BAKER, DIANE WATT, E.A. JONES, ANNIE SUTHERLAND, BARRY WINDEATT, MARLEEN CRE, ELISABETH DUTTON, ELIZABETH ROBERTSON, LAURA SAETVEIT MILES, LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY, ENA JENKINS, VINCENT GILLESPIE, SARAH SALIH

Written in a time of plague and persecution, Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love grapples with the problem of evil and the challenge it presents to those who wish to believe in a loving God. Julian's sixteen revelations about sin and redemption are some of the first theological works written in English. While her reassuring wisdom has gained in popularity over time, her struggles to reconcile her inner questioning with the teachings she had received through the church and through her mystical visions will also ring true to many readers today. In this new version, Elisabeth Dutton preserves the beauty and ambiguity in the original language, while rendering this classic accessible to modern readers. Dutton's introduction provides essential background information on Julian of Norwich, explores her role as a woman in church, and sheds light on how her ideas relate to modern issues.