The English Mystery Plays 0520040813, 9780520040816
This important new study of the English mystery plays has a twofold purpose. It is concerned to investigate the antecede
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English Pages 437 [458] Year 1980
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The English Mystery Plays Rosemary Woolf
THE ENGLISH MYSTERY PLAYS This important new study of the English mystery plays has a twofold purpose. It is concerned to investigate the antece¬ dents of the four extant cycles (York, Chester, Towneley, Ludus Coventriac) and to demonstrate the dramatic value of the plays themselves. The opening and con¬ cluding chapters place the plays in their historical context by discussing on the one hand the emergence and achieve¬ ments of genuine religious drama (as opposed to liturgical drama) in the twelfth century and on the other the changes in taste that threw the plays into disrepute in the sixteenth century. The main part of the book analyses the plays in detail, considering the iconographic and theological traditions that guided the dramatists in their treatment of biblical subject-matter, and also looking at the Continental drama of the time to find out what other dramatic possibilities were open to writers in the Middle Ages.
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The English Mystery Plays
The English Mystery Plays Rosemary Woolf Somerville College, Oxford
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles 1972
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles, California ISBN: 0-520-02276-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72—82226 © Rosemary Woolf 1972
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism.
Printed in Great Britain
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