The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama: 2004–2005: Survey, Bibliography, and Reviews

Summary

This article is a regular feature of “Fifteenth-Century Studies.” Our intent is to catalogue, survey, and assess scholarship on the staging and textual configuration of dramatic presentations in the late Middle Ages. Like all such dated material, this assessment remains incomplete. We shall therefore include 2005 again in the next listing. Our readers are encouraged to bring new items to our attention, including their own work. Monographs and collections selected for detailed review will appear in the third section of this article and will be marked by an asterisk in the pages below.

Noticeably, the books, collections, and articles devoted to the medieval drama of more than one or two European countries have increased. Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken edited Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in which contributors discussed festal or penitential processions for Palm Sunday, Corpus Christi, and for the Entries of Princes. Venues were in England, France, Italy, Poland, and Belgium. In New Approaches to European Theater of the Middle Ages: An Ontology, Barbara I. Gusick, Edelgard E. DuBruck, and contributors from both sides of the Atlantic proved that dramatic texts were staged in a variety of European regions, including Yugoslavia. The plays’ cultural and performative aspects were discussed with care in this informative volume, which strategically highlights the societal/theatrical roles of the oppressed (the disabled, Jews, and peasants).

Farce and Farcical Elements, edited by Wim Hüsken and Konrad Schoell,* showcased exclusively English, French, and German comic theater. European Medieval Drama, volumes 5 and 6, touched many subjects, not only relevant to England and France (vol. 5), but also to Livonia, Spain, and Germany (6). The editors (Jelle Koopmans and Bart Ramakers) brought such topics as theology (Gréban — Dominguez), stage arrangements in a miracle play (Walsh), how to arrange playing God's presence (Croatia — Pulišelić), the influence of iconography (Touber and Hurlbut), fortune and gambling (Hindley), and abstract figures (Schoell). In volume 6, processions were treated again: parades (Pettitt), painful processions (Paris — Carlson), iconography (Gréban — Clark and Sheingorn), and the scenarios of Hanseatic merchants (Mänd); Valladolid's Entry of Ferdinand the Catholic was investigated by Ronald E. Surtz.