tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4899356293536570103..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: And dream of sheepCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-41072537661710044672007-12-17T16:45:00.000-05:002007-12-17T16:45:00.000-05:00JJC et al: Thanks very much! These are important a...JJC et al: Thanks very much! These are important and useful to hear. I've encountered the disentangling-from-the-grand-narrative before, from the work of some colleagues and from an excellent grad seminar on medieval drama.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-50183730718328981662007-12-17T13:55:00.000-05:002007-12-17T13:55:00.000-05:00Thanks, Rob. And apologies everyone for the horrif...Thanks, Rob. And apologies everyone for the horrific number of typos in my comments. Even Claire Sponsler got her "i" poked out.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-69595603927400553572007-12-17T11:22:00.000-05:002007-12-17T11:22:00.000-05:00It's the Coletti: thanks much, Rob.It's the Coletti: thanks much, Rob.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-22698329749802313852007-12-17T11:18:00.000-05:002007-12-17T11:18:00.000-05:00Karl, you're remembering Theresa Coletti's article...Karl, you're remembering Theresa Coletti's article on "Reading REED" from that early 1990s Lee Patterson collection. Patricia Badir has made similar arguments. My sense is that the REED collections have been broadening their scope over the years, but there's clearly still much to do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-25501618587923424392007-12-17T10:22:00.000-05:002007-12-17T10:22:00.000-05:00Have people argued then that the Records of Early ...Have people argued then that the Records of Early English Drama hurts as much as they help? It's great to have records that let us know how much we're missing, but perhaps the REED guidelines--and I should say, I don't know what they are off hand--delimit too firmly, because of the authority of REED, the outer boundaries of what gets counted as drama?<BR/><BR/>I know I must be getting this critique from some article(s) I read during my orals, but which one I don't remember...Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-2440344904553436172007-12-17T10:11:00.000-05:002007-12-17T10:11:00.000-05:00One more thing: medieval drama has also been disen...One more thing: medieval drama has also been disentangled from the generic and evolutionary narratives in which it had long found itself, so that it medieval drama is no longer seen as a bounded and well defined genre, or evaluated as a mere prelude to Shakespeare. That is, the current emphasis is upon the dramas themselves (in all their possibility and complexity), rather than using them to look forward to the early modern. Also, as Clare Sponsler pointed out, it is likely that much more drama existed than we have records for ... and also that much more of this drama was written down than we realize, only it was not written down in a form we recognize <EM>as</EM> drama. She argued -- very persuasively -- that we need a larger conceptualziation of what is performative/"dramatic."Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-12926520723404160352007-12-17T06:24:00.000-05:002007-12-17T06:24:00.000-05:00Karl: alas, this kind of cleverness was not in the...Karl: alas, this kind of cleverness was not in the director's bones. She described herself at the workshop the following day as a person of faith, and that reverence was everywhere evident in the staging. The carnality of medieval devotion likewise got much attention during the workshop, but was not much of a feature of the production (in which there was carnality, but of the sort that needed to be transcended to reach the nativity moment).<BR/><BR/>blb: Here are some of the things that come to mind for me. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert abut this, so I hope some reader will jump in and expand and/or correct the following.<BR/><BR/>It used to be thought that medieval drama had to belong under big rubrics like "mystery plays" or "cycle dramas." Such designations assumed that individual plays belonged to a very large series that likely had been generated and sustained by a specific town -- this, the York or Chester or Wakefield or N-town cycles. This series would begin with a creation play and end with the life of Jesus, all of biblical history condensed into episodes.<BR/><BR/>While some dramas undoubtedly belonged to such big cycles, recent scholarship has emphasized that not all plays need have. That is, we don't need to think of the Second Shepherd's Play (for example) as having belonged to anything larger than itself. It need not have been staged on a wagon for a civic audience. It could well have been a one-off production, and could as easily have been staged in a lord's manor as in a town or a monastery. The lines and characters would likely have been adapted to the specific circumstances. The play, that is, was a living and changing thing. Also, we have no idea what centuries such plays belong to -- anything from the 14th onwards. 2nd Shepherd's is no longer associated with Wakefield. The reason it was written down in the manuscript is hard to determine: a Catholic recusant family attempting to maintain ties to a fading tradition? Was it the Marion material that appealed at a time when Mary was vanishing? Almost everything about the play is up for grabs.<BR/><BR/>Another way of putting this would be to say that the Second Shepherd's Play -- like other medieval dramas -- had until recently been prisoner to a historical context that turns out to be more fantasized than provable. These works have now been emancipated, and that freeing has reinvigorated them.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49823508536029080662007-12-16T13:33:00.000-05:002007-12-16T13:33:00.000-05:00"Almost everything we thought we knew about it has..."Almost everything we thought we knew about it has been proven false over the past decade or two."<BR/><BR/>If JJC or anyone else would like to share some examples of key points or articles related to this, I'd be very grateful. <BR/><BR/>Hope everyone is full of nondenominational joy. I'm up to my arms in grading before I head home.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-83960945229554491952007-12-16T11:45:00.000-05:002007-12-16T11:45:00.000-05:00Ah, right. The use of Loude sing cuckou, also, rem...Ah, right. The use of Loude sing cuckou, also, reminds me of nothing more than the middle two graphs on <A HREF="http://books.google.com/books?id=ViMiMXw9rvQC&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=donna+tartt+answering+machine&source=web&ots=AvNA7ZLPpd&sig=kVjhQ5j_o152N-4uPOI1KlHGqAA" REL="nofollow">this page.</A>Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-51571570336648993652007-12-16T11:42:00.000-05:002007-12-16T11:42:00.000-05:00The puppeteer (who at the nativity plays Mary) Ple...<I>The puppeteer (who at the nativity plays Mary) </I><BR/><BR/>Please please tell me the puppeteer did the typologically appropriate thing and manipulated the puppet with his or her womb ("uteripulated" (here recalling that "manipulate" comes from manus + a root of plenus, full)).<BR/><BR/><I>can't there ever be an "authentic" medievalpalooza without that one?</I><BR/>Agreed. I might want a song or songform with which I was utterly unfamiliar, something that uprooted my sense of my identity having a share in the distant English past. Loude sing cuckou seems designed to <I>signal</I> authenticity, to reintroduce the audience into the familiarity of the medieval; it's too complacent a choice. <BR/><BR/>I would have wanted something like that macaronic verse of the wailing, wandering woman who recounts how a priest used his Latin to knock her up (anyone want to help me remember here? Ah: <A HREF="http://quodshe.blogspot.com/2006/09/belated-friday-poetry-blogging-naughty.html" REL="nofollow">found it</A>). After all, the collision of the bawdy with the transcendent is just <I>so</I> medieval, and it's just that erotic, carnal piety that non-medievalists and modern day fundamentalists find startling.Karl Steelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03353370018006849747noreply@blogger.com