“Be prepared to perform what I ask” - Invasions of Affective Piety in the Comedic Activity of The Second Shepherds’ Play and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2525-3123.gis.2022.185792Keywords:
Devotion, Romance, Performance, Affective piety, Cycle dramasAbstract
Beginning with an investigation into forms of aurality used in late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century Middle English devotional literature, this article breaks down journeys of affective piety in both the courtly romance and urban cycle plays. Traditional understandings of genre divisions are super-ceded in the Middle English period by performative spirituality and invocations to the audience/ reader to a contemplative posture. The Wakefield Master and the Gawain poet developed their work in dialogue with Lollard critiques of church excesses. They both show investment in personal expressions of inward devotions which had been popularized in the work of Nicholas Love and other Carthusian texts dealing in popular piety. Both The Second Shepherd’s Play and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight develop landscapes of upheaval and redemption around their characters, drawing the reader into individual reflection on well-known sacraments and intervals of the church year.
Downloads
References
Brantley, Jessica. Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Brewer, Derek, and Jonathan Gibson. A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Suffolk: DS Brewer, 1999.
Bowers, Rick. “Comedy, Carnival, and Grace: The Performance of Mak in the Second Shepherds’ Play.” ESC: English Studies in Canada. Volume 28: Issue 4, December 2002. 583-602.
Chism, Christine. Alliterative Revivals. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=74742&site=eds-live.
Edminster, Warren. The Preaching Fox: Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Gibson, Gail McMurray. The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in Late Medieval England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Haines, Victory Yelverton. The Fortunate Fall of Sir Gawain: The Typology of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. University Press of America, 1982.
Hopkins, Andrea. The Sinful Knights: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance. Clarendon Press, 1990.
Julian of Norwich. A Revelation of Love. The Writings of Julian of Norwich. Edited by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins. Pennsylvania State: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.
Leprow, Lauren. Enacting the Sacrament: Counter-Lollardry in the Townley Cycle. Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 1990.
Levy, Ian Christopher. John Wyclif: Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the Parameters of Orthodoxy. Marquette Studies in Theology No. 36. Edited by Andrew Tallon. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003.
Love, Nicholas. Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Edited by Michael G. Sargent. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1992.
The Middle English Pearl. Edited by John Conley. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.
Pearl & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Edited with an Introduction by AC Cawley. London: Dent 1962.
Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality. Edited by Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Performance Perspectives: A Critical Introduction. Edited by Johnathan Pitches and Sita Popat. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Purdon, Liam O. The Wakefield Master’s Dramatic Art: A Drama of Spiritual Understanding. University Press of Florida, 2003.
The Shepherds (2). Edited by Garrett PJ Epp. In The Townley Plays. 2017. TEAMS Middle. English Texts Series. The University of Rochester, 2017. https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/epp-the-shepherds-2
Tuck, J. Anthony. “Carthusian Monks and Lollard Knights: Religious Attitude at the Court of Richard II.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer. Published by The New Chaucer Society Proceedings: No. 1, 1984. 149-161.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Elizabeth Perry
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:
a. All rights reserved for authors. Journal has right to first publication. Work is simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License which permits sharing work with recognition of authorship and initial publication in this journal for non-commercial ends.
b. Authors are authorized to separately make additional contracts for non-exclusive distribution of version of work published in this journal (e. g. publish in institutional repository or as book chapter), with recognition of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
