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Approaching individual plays in the Chester cycle from the point of view of recent and startling research findings, this volume investigates how new sources shift our understanding of the last years of cycle's performance. The essays help to clarify our current perception that it was not a nation-wide policy of suppression, but rather a complex network of local pressures, that affected the decline and eventual abandonment of civic religious drama.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction: the Chester Cycle in context, David Klausner, Helen Ostovich and Jessica Dell; Part 1 The Chester Script: The text of the Chester plays in 1572: a conjectural re-construction, Alexandra F. Johnston; In the beginning! A new look at Chester Play One, lines 1-51, David Mills in conjunction with Joy Mills. Part 2 Faith and Doubt: Doubt and religious drama across 16th-century England, or did the Middle Ages believe in their plays?, Erin E. Kelly; Dice at Chester’s Passion, Matthew Sergi; ’Whye ys thy cloathinge nowe so reedd?’: salvific blood in the Chester Ascension, John T. Sebastian; Affective piety: a 'method' for medieval actors in the Chester Cycle, Margaret Rogerson. Part 3 Elizabethan Religion(s): The Chester Cycle and early Elizabethan religion, Paul Whitfield White; ’Erazed in the booke’?: periodization and the material text of the Chester Banns, Kurt A. Schreyer. Part 4 Space and Place in Chester: When in Rome: shifting conceptions of the Chester Cycle’s Roman references in pre- and post-Reformation England, Sheila Christie; Exegesis in the city: the Chester plays and earlier Chester writing, Mark Faulkner; Maintaining the realm: city, commonwealth, and crown in Chester’s midsummer plays, Heather S. Mitchell-Buck. Afterword: Origins and continuities: F.M. Salter and the Chester plays, JoAnna Dutker; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Jessica Dell is a doctoral student at McMaster University, Canada. David Klausner is professor of English and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. Helen Ostovich is emeritus professor of English at McMaster University, Canada.
