Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period Hardcover - 2001 - 1st Edition
by Lawrence M. Clopper
From the rear cover
How was it possible for drama, especially biblical representations, to appear in the Christian West given the church's condemnation of the theatrum of the ancient world? In a book with radical implications for the study of medieval literature, Lawrence Clopper resolves this perplexing question. Drama, Play, and Game demonstrates that the theatrum repudiated by medieval clerics was not theater as we understand the term today. Clopper contends that critics have misrepresented Western stage history because they have assumed that theatrum designates a place where drama is performed. While theatrum was thought of as a site of spectacle during the Middle Ages, the term was more closely connected with immodest behavior and lurid forms of festive culture. Clerics were not opposed to liturgical representations in churches, but they strove ardently to suppress May games, ludi, festivals, and liturgical parodies. Medieval drama, then, stemmed from a more vernacular tradition than previously acknowledged-one developed by England's laity outside the boundaries of clerical rule. Drama, Play, and Game also explores the antitheatrical milieu in which this tradition developed. Clopper reads the Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge-thought to be the only sustained attack on theater between late antiquity and the Puritan period-as an assault not on religious drama but on various forms of ludi inhonesti. He then argues that ludi varied widely in England depending on the participants' clerical or lay status and on where the ludi were performed. Clopper provides profiles of ludic practices in a variety of venues: monasteries and churches, aristocratic houses, cities and towns, parishes, and the countryside. Moving from consideration of why dramas developed in some cities and towns and not others, Clopper considers finally the matter of surviving plays-the kind of information that gets into them and the anxieties they display-and questions whose interests the plays represented. He argues ultimately that clerical indifference and growing distaste for vernacular drama engendered a reaction from lay people who institutionalized themselves in guilds to assert their own political power, flaunt the prestige of urban life, and take advantage of new commercial opportunities.
Details
- Title Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
- Author Lawrence M. Clopper
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition number 1st
- Edition 1
- Pages 384
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
- Date 2001-05
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index
- ISBN 9780226110301 / 0226110303
- Weight 1.38 lbs (0.63 kg)
- Dimensions 9.34 x 6.35 x 1.07 in (23.72 x 16.13 x 2.72 cm)
-
Themes
- Cultural Region: British
- Library of Congress subjects English drama - Early modern and, England - Social life and customs - 1066-1485
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 00011851
- Dewey Decimal Code 822.109
Media reviews
Citations
- Choice, 12/01/2001, Page 681
More Copies for Sale
Drama, Play and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
by Lawrence M. Clopper
- New
- Hardcover
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780226110301 / 0226110303
- Quantity Available
- 3
- Seller
-
Southport, Merseyside, United Kingdom
- Item Price
-
$85.70$12.61 shipping to USA
Show Details
Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
by Clopper, Lawrence M.
- Used
- very good
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780226110301 / 0226110303
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Seller
-
Seattle, Washington, United States
- Item Price
-
$72.68FREE shipping to USA
Show Details
Drama, Play, and Game English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
by Lawrence M. Clopper
- New
- Hardcover
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780226110301 / 0226110303
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Seller
-
Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom
- Item Price
-
$92.54$12.67 shipping to USA
Show Details
Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
by Clopper, Lawrence M
- New
- Hardcover
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10 / ISBN 13
- 9780226110301 / 0226110303
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Seller
-
San Diego, California, United States
- Item Price
-
$150.43$5.45 shipping to USA