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IMC 2011: Sessions

Session 119: Economic Aspects of Medieval Drama

Monday 11 July 2011, 11.15-12.45

Moderator/Chair:Philip Butterworth, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Paper 119-aThe Value of a Manuscript: Economic Realities and Cycle Play Manuscripts
(Language: English)
Danielle Magnusson, Department of English, University of Washington
Index terms: Economics - Urban, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Performance Arts - Drama
Paper 119-bBetween Market and Church: Economics of Solace in the Chester Shepherds' Play
(Language: English)
Robert Wakeman, Department of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore
Index terms: Economics - Rural, Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama, Social History
Paper 119-cLa Celestina, or the Impossibility of Usus
(Language: English)
Raúl Álvarez-Moreno, Department of French, Hispanic & Italian Studies, University of British Columbia
Index terms: Economics - Urban, Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese
Abstract

Paper -a:
The cycle plays were an obvious reflection of wealth distribution in English communities. Simply put, wealthy guilds were able to sponsor plays while impoverished or disorganized guilds were not. What deserves especial critical attention, however, is the relationship between economic reality and the physical manuscript on which the cycle plays appear. My paper will investigate some early English drama manuscript characteristics, paying particular attention to the Towneley plays (Huntington Library MS HM1), to observe how scribal patterns of decoration offer clues to mise-en-page performance, and to suggest some interpretive strategies that might highlight economic attitudes and disparities in the communities in which they were performed. Printed versions of medieval plays, unfortunately, offer only weak representations of what is available on the rich pages of medieval manuscripts.

Paper -b:
The Chester Shepherds' Play typifies the triangulation of urban performers with both rural and urban audiences in the Whitsun Plays. Through performances in sites significant to both the city and its hinterlands (from marketplaces to cathedral squares), the wagons map a spiritual and economic itinerary for the entire region. The Chester Shepherds' Play offers spiritual solace for 'Shepperde[s] poore of base and lowe degree, 'beset by contemporary problems acutely felt by the audience: land enclosure, vagrancy, rustling, and depreciating agricultural wages. But, I argue, the play's call for spiritual growth in the face of economic crisis is an imaginary resolution of a real problem. The angel provides an opiatic answer to the structural problems inherent in Chester's market economy. Post-Reformation spiritual enclosure cannot safeguard anchors and hermits, just as Chester's markets do not attend to the needs of enclosed agricultural laborers.

Paper -c:
Scholars have occasionally extended the transitional characterization of the influential Tragic-Comedy of Calisto and Melibea (1499), popularly known as Celestina, to illustrate the first phase of capitalism under the grounds of class antagonism, women's economic independence, the rise of the merchant urban class, and moral crisis in a new Castilian monetary scenario. Departing from W. Benjamin's view that capitalism is essentially a religious phenomenon developed parasitically from Christianism, the presentation will explore how the results of different ecclesiastical debates on the conception of time, the nature of charity and self-love, and mainly the possibility or not of usus without abusus impacted the competitive atmosphere, the individualist attitudes and generalized profit/pleasure-seeking behavior observed in the work.