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Author: Sylvio Konkol Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3668040788 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 29
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: In the late Middle Ages, so called 'mystery plays' enjoyed great popularity in English towns and especially in those of the north. Many of these plays were grouped in greater cycles among which the cycle of York, commonly known as the "York Mystery Plays", is the best preserved, and presumably one of the oldest, largest and most elaborate ones as well. Its forty-seven constituent plays are concerned with Christian belief and sacred history, a circumstance reflected in the collection's authentic title – the Corpus Christi play. It is interesting that the term 'mystery plays', an invention of the 18th century, does not only point to the content of the cycle, as the alternative expression 'miracle plays' does. The term simultaneously addresses those associations of people that were responsible for the cycle's staging: the trade and craft guilds of a town. Based on the archaic meaning of the word, denoting a 'handicraft or trade', it was occasionally referred to these guilds as 'mysteries' as well. In the case of the dramatic cycle of York, each individual play was assigned to one (or in some cases two) of these 'mysteries' or guilds. This paper aims at investigating the role these guilds played in the organisation, the funding and the staging of the cycle. It can be argued that aside from their more obvious economic and social functions, the medieval trade and craft guilds also had a cultural function in the narrow meaning of the term. Further can be argued that the Corpus Christi cycle was not only a cultural and a ritual event, but that it had an important social (and perhaps even an economic) function for the city of York and the communal life of its inhabitants. In fact, it may be this interplay of various domains of life and thought that can explain how the cycle could survive in the form of an annual performance for a period as long as two hundred years, and why it came into being as well as disappeared not randomly but at certain moments in history. Looking upon the play as a civic rather than an ecclesiastical affair, this work thus investigates the cycle's link with the economic history of York and the organisational development of the trade and craft guilds. It will be shown in particular that as a sort of 'producers' the guilds had a range of clearly defined responsibilities and that among these the aspect of funding was the most central.
Author: Sylvio Konkol Publisher: GRIN Verlag ISBN: 3668040788 Category : Foreign Language Study Languages : en Pages : 29
Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: In the late Middle Ages, so called 'mystery plays' enjoyed great popularity in English towns and especially in those of the north. Many of these plays were grouped in greater cycles among which the cycle of York, commonly known as the "York Mystery Plays", is the best preserved, and presumably one of the oldest, largest and most elaborate ones as well. Its forty-seven constituent plays are concerned with Christian belief and sacred history, a circumstance reflected in the collection's authentic title – the Corpus Christi play. It is interesting that the term 'mystery plays', an invention of the 18th century, does not only point to the content of the cycle, as the alternative expression 'miracle plays' does. The term simultaneously addresses those associations of people that were responsible for the cycle's staging: the trade and craft guilds of a town. Based on the archaic meaning of the word, denoting a 'handicraft or trade', it was occasionally referred to these guilds as 'mysteries' as well. In the case of the dramatic cycle of York, each individual play was assigned to one (or in some cases two) of these 'mysteries' or guilds. This paper aims at investigating the role these guilds played in the organisation, the funding and the staging of the cycle. It can be argued that aside from their more obvious economic and social functions, the medieval trade and craft guilds also had a cultural function in the narrow meaning of the term. Further can be argued that the Corpus Christi cycle was not only a cultural and a ritual event, but that it had an important social (and perhaps even an economic) function for the city of York and the communal life of its inhabitants. In fact, it may be this interplay of various domains of life and thought that can explain how the cycle could survive in the form of an annual performance for a period as long as two hundred years, and why it came into being as well as disappeared not randomly but at certain moments in history. Looking upon the play as a civic rather than an ecclesiastical affair, this work thus investigates the cycle's link with the economic history of York and the organisational development of the trade and craft guilds. It will be shown in particular that as a sort of 'producers' the guilds had a range of clearly defined responsibilities and that among these the aspect of funding was the most central.
Author: Clifford Davidson Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications ISBN: 1580444539 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 616
Book Description
The feast of Corpus Christi, celebrated annually on Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was devoted to the Eucharist, and the normal practice was to have solemn processions through the city with the Host, the consecrated wafer that was believed to have been transformed into the true body and blood of Jesus. In this way the "cultus Dei" thus celebrated allowed the people to venerate the Eucharistic bread in order that they might be stimulated to devotion and brought symbolically, even mystically into a relationship with the central moments of salvation history. Perhaps it is logical, therefore, that pageants and plays were introduced in order to access yet another way of visualizing and participating in those events. Thus the "invisible things" of the divine order "from the creation of the world" might be displayed. The York Corpus Christi Plays, contained in London, British Library, MS. Add. 35290 and comprising more than thirteen thousand lines of verse, actually represent a unique survival of medieval theater. They form the only complete play cycle verifiably associated with the feast of Corpus Christi that is extant and was performed at a specific location in England.
Author: Margaret Rogerson Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd ISBN: 1903153352 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Essays on the York Mystery Plays, uniting voices from the scholarly world with the York community that has assumed responsibility for their production today. The York Play of Corpus Christi, also known as the York Cycle, has been central to the study of early English theatre for over a century and a touchstone for the revival of medieval dramatic practice for over fifty years. But these two endeavours... have often found little common ground. This volume therefore accomplishes something very important. It brings together scholars of medieval English drama and places them in dialogue with experienced practtitioners from the community. Together, they share a common commitment to understanding how performances matter to the communities that produce them, and how plays intersect with other public activities. CAROL SYMES, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana. This volume provides a wealth of new insights into the performance of mystery plays in medieval York and their modern revival. It utilises both academic study, and the practical experience of those who now produce the cycle within York itself on wagons in the street, in an approximation of their original performance. A number of topics are covered. The manuscript is linked to Richard III; the Masons are introduced as non-guildsmen in an enterprise assumed to be guild-specific; families, not just male heads of households, are shown to be important to the dramatic narrative; and cognitive theory elucidates performance past and present.Recent productions are discussed in lively detail by those directly responsible for them, leading to analyses of performances in Israel, Spain, and Australia, not all of them of a predictable kind, which offer further angles on the medieval dramatic tradition. Professor Margaret Rogerson teaches in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. Contributors: Margaret Rogerson, Keith Jones, Richard Beadle, Sheila K. Christie,Mike Tyler, Jill Stevenson, Elenid Davies, Ben Pugh, Peter Brown, Tony Wright, Steve Bielby, Emma Cunningham, Alan Heaven, Linda Ali, Paul Toy, Gweno Williams, John Merrylees, David Richmond, Alexandra F. Johnston, Sharon Aronson-Lehavi, Pamela M. King
Author: Sarah Beckwith Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226041336 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
In Signifying God, Sarah Beckwith explores the most lavish, long-lasting, and complex form of collective theatrical enterprise in English history: the York Corpus Christi plays. First staged as early as 1376, the plays were performed annually until the late 1500s and involved as much as a tenth of the city in multiple performances at a dozen or more locations. Introducing a radical new understanding of these plays as "sacramental theater," Beckwith shows how organizing the plays served as a political mechanism for regulating labor, and how theater and sacrament combined in them to do important theological work. She argues, for instance, that the theology of Corpus Christi in the resurrection plays can only be understood as a theatrical exploration of eucharistic absence and presence. Beckwith frames her study with discussions of twentieth-century manifestations of sacramental theater in Barry Unsworth's novel Morality Play and Denys Arcand's film Jesus of Montreal, and the connections between contemporary revivals of the York Corpus Christi plays and England's heritage culture.
Author: Terrence McNally Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN: 9780822216964 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 76
Book Description
THE STORY: The most controversial and talked about play of the 1998 theatrical season begins: We are going to tell you an old and familiar story. But from that point on, nothing feels quite familiar again. What follows is a story that parallels t
Author: Richard D. Wragg Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 1914049020 Category : Guild Book of the Barber Surgeons of York Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
A new exploration of the secular manuscripts and medieval medical texts associated with the York Guild and its members. Produced in 1486 and subsequently augmented, the Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library Egerton MS 2572) is a unique record of the knowledge, ambitions, activities and civic relationships maintained by the Barbers and Surgeons Guild over a period of 300 years. The manuscript's earliest folios contain images, astrological tracts, a plague treatise and a bloodletting poem. To these were added early modern ordinances and oaths, a series of royal portraits, and the names of the Guild's masters and apprentices. It is a rare survival of late medieval medical knowledge placed within a civic context. This new multi-disciplinary examination of the York Guild Book presents a comprehensive edition of its content and a detailed study of the creation and use of this fascinating manuscript. The York Guild Book was not owned by any one person but was intended to be representative of the types of manuscripts the Guild's members might have individually possessed. The Guild's commission elevated their manuscript's functional content into something which could be proudly owned and displayed, as is demonstrated by the stylishly executed pen and ink drawings, two of which are possibly unique. Through a contextualisation of the form and content of the manuscript, the book articulates ideas about material culture and the ceremonial role of secular manuscripts whilst shedding new light on the dissemination and status of medieval medical texts.
Author: Andrew Brown Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108318096 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 796
Book Description
Bruges was undoubtedly one of the most important cities in medieval Europe. Bringing together specialists from both archaeology and history, this 'total' history presents an integrated view of the city's history from its very beginnings, tracing its astonishing expansion through to its subsequent decline in the sixteenth century. The authors' analysis of its commercial growth, industrial production, socio-political changes, and cultural creativity is grounded in an understanding of the city's structure, its landscape and its built environment. More than just a biography of a city, this book places Bruges within a wider network of urban and rural development and its history in a comparative framework, thereby offering new insights into the nature of a metropolis.
Author: Margaret Rogerson Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning ISBN: 1535852674 Category : Study Aids Languages : en Pages : 15
Book Description
Gale Researcher Guide for: The York Corpus Christi Plays is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.
Author: Richard Beadle Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780192837103 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
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 subjectmatter 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 introductionwhich examines the history of the cycle and discusses the immensely popular modern productions in York and elsewhere.
Author: Sylvio Konkol
Author: Sylvio Konkol
Author: Clifford Davidson
Author: Maurice Hussey
Author: Margaret Rogerson
Author: Sarah Beckwith
Author: Terrence McNally
Author: Richard D. Wragg
Author: Andrew Brown
Author: Margaret Rogerson
Author: Richard Beadle