Defining Acts: Drama and the Politics of Interpretaion in Late Medieval England - Softcover

Nisse, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268036020 ISBN 13: 9780268036027

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005

Synopsis

This study examines the social, political and theological issues that were brought to the late medieval stage. Examining plays, urban pageant cycles and travelling `miracles' and morality plays, dating to the 14th and 15th centuries, Ruth Nisse explores how these translated contemporary issues and especially vernacular theology through performance. Works such as Chaucer's "Miller's Tale," the York Passion Plays, the "Wakefield Master" plays and the Play of the Sacrament are discussed in detail.

About this title

About the Author:

Ruth Nisse is associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Review:

“. . . An absorbing work on exegetical practices in late medieval literature. . . . Defining Acts is one of the most interesting investigations into exegetical politics in early English drama to be produced in many years.” (Medium Aevum)

“Nisse’s discussions include much of value. [O]ne cannot but be grateful for her thoughts on the problems caused by men playing women’s roles and Christians playing Jews and on the issues between governing and governed classes.” (Choice)

“Nisse’s exceptional study of the political implications of interpretation both represented in, and occasioned by various dramatic enactments of religious texts offers a fascinating glimpse into not only the performance history of her dramatic texts, but also the interweaving of the great intellectual and cultural threads which produce the unique texture of the period.” (Comitatus)

“Defining Acts examines the ways that biblical and morality plays from later medieval England performed a ‘vernacular theology’ that addressed the social concerns of their diverse audiences. . . Her book explores the intersection of a religious-but not ecclesiastically controlled-drama with the multiple political and spiritual currents circulating during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; these include Wycliffite theology, female and male mysticism, Franciscan ideals, and anti-Jewish exegesis.” (Speculum)

“In Defining Acts: Drama and the Politics of Interpretation in Late Medieval England we see the challenges and problems of theatrical exegesis played out in a theater of remarkable range and urgency. Ruth Nisse ably persuades in this thoughtful, illuminating book that, as her epigraph from Beckett’s Endgame extolls, ‘Ah the old questions, the old answers, there’s nothing like them!’ " (Studies in the Age of Chaucer)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0268036020
• ISBN 13: 9780268036027
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176