1 - The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama. 2007–2008: 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 during the late Middle Ages. Like all such dated material, this assessment remains incomplete. We shall therefore include 2008 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.

During the last decade, critics of medieval drama have demonstrated a propensity to move beyond emphasizing written texts and turned to the social and political circumstances of theatrical performances, and the skills of actors. This new attention is visible in a collection by Evelyn Birge Vitz,* N. F. Regalado, and M. Lawrence (Performing Medieval Narrative). Excellent also is the book by Philip Butterworth* (although restricted to England): Magic on the Early English Stage, which highlights the activities of jongleurs, their sleights of hand, skills, and deceptions. Another groundbreaking book is Julie Stone Peters's The Theatre of the Book, 1480–1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe. Peters contributes here to the history of communication; she defines theater, the authors' involvement, and their position within society. The study remains weak on the history of actual performances. Lynette R. Muir* penned a companion volume to her 1995 The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe, entitled Love and Conflict in Medieval Drama: The Plays and Their Legacy (2007), but left matters of performance undiscussed.