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Carol SYMES, A Common Stage. Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras

Carol SYMES, A Common Stage. Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras

Publié le par Gabriel Marcoux-Chabot (Source : Site web de la maison d'édition)


Carol SYMES, A Common Stage. Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2007, 360 p.
ISBN 978-0-8014-4581-1


RÉSUMÉ

Medieval Arras was a thriving town on the frontier between the kingdomof France and the county of Flanders, and home to Europe's earliestsurviving vernacular plays: The Play of St. Nicholas, The Courtly Lad of Arras, The Boy and the Blind Man, The Play of the Bower, and The Play about Robin and about Marion. In A Common Stage,Carol Symes undertakes a cultural archeology of these artifacts,analyzing the processes by which a handful of entertainments wereconceived, transmitted, received, and recorded during the thirteenthcentury. She then places the resulting scripts alongside otherdocumented performances with which plays shared a common space andvocabulary: the crying of news, publication of law, preaching ofsermons, telling of stories, celebration of liturgies, and arrangementof civic spectacles. She thereby shows how groups and individualsgained access to various means of publicity, participated in publiclife, and shaped public opinion. And she reveals that the theater ofthe Middle Ages was not merely a mirror of society but a social andpolitical sphere, a vital site for the exchange of information andideas, and a vibrant medium for debate, deliberation, and dispute.

Theresult is a book that closes the gap between the scattered textualremnants of medieval drama and the culture of performance from whichthat drama emerged. A Common Stage thus challenges theprevalent understanding of theater history while offering the firstcomprehensive history of a community often credited with the inventionof French as a powerful literary language.


BIOGRAPHIE

Carol Symes is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.