Elisabeth M. Dutton Books

This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international ? eld of scholars including a number of leading authorities. Across the medieval and early modern periods, drama is seen to be a way of dissemi-nating theological and philosophical ideas. In medieval England, when literacy was low and the liturgy in Latin, drama translated and transformed spiritual truths, embodying them for a wider audience than could be reached by books alone. In Tudor England, humanist belief in the validity and potential of drama as a pedagogical tool informs the interlude, and examples of dramatized instruction abound on early modern stages. Academic drama is a particularly preg -nant locus for the exploration of drama and peda-gogy: universities and the Inns of Court trained some of the leading playwrights of the early theatre, but also supplied methods and materials that shaped professional playhouse compositions.

Drawing together well-known and less familiar works from English and German writers, and focusing on references to clothing, Dutton and Kirakosian argue for important connections between medieval visions and medieval plays. These connections may be, initially, surprising, given the social nature of theatre that contrasts with the intensely personal and subjective nature of the visionary experience. While an audience provides collective witness to a play, the visionary, almost by definition, sees something that others do not: the visionary makes an audience of one for a drama presented – at least according to the believer – by God. By contrast, in the visionary text the visionary seeks to re-present her vision, in literary form, for a wider audience of readers, and to stir their belief in it. Reading across genres and languages, with particular attention on writing by women and on the figure of Mary Magdalen, the authors explore the dynamic power of clothing as a catalyst for imaginative processes in writers, readers and spectators alike.

Essays in this volume explore medieval perceptions of the role of human creativity and the nature of creation. Drawing on examples from literature, art, music, and philosophy, and across the Western European tradition, the contributors consider how medieval craftsmen, writers, artists and composers understood their activity in relation to the works of past masters, and of the ultimate creator, God. The interdisciplinary nature of the collection and its chronological range facilitate a nuanced re-examination of shifting attitudes to individual artistic creativity across the medieval period and into the early modern.