Name :- Himanshi Parmar
Paper :- 105, History of English Literature.
Roll number :- 08
Enrollment number :- 4069206420210025
Email id :- himanshiparmar3004@gmail.com
Batch :- 2021 - 23 (M. A. Sem 1)
Submitted to :- S. B. Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Introduction :-
A play, as most of you know, is where live actors get on a stage and act out a story in front of an audience. During Mediaeval times most plays were religious and were used to teach people about the Bible, the lives of saints, or how to live your life the right way. There were three different types of plays performed during mediaeval times; The Mystery Play, the Miracle Play and the Morality Play.
Mystery plays :-
Mystery plays were stories taken from the Bible. Each play had four or five different scenes or acts. The priests and monks were the actors. Each scene or act was performed at a different place in town and the people moved from one stage to the next to watch the play. The play usually ended outside the church so that the people would go to church and hear a sermon after watching the play.
Miracle plays :-
The miracle play was about the life or actions of a saint, usually about the actions that made that person a saint. One popular Miracle play was about Saint George and the dragon.
Morality plays :-
Morality plays were designed to teach people a lesson in how to live their life according to the rules of the church.Sometimes these plays had elaborate sets, sometimes no sets at all. It didn't seem to matter. The people attended these plays. They didn't have to, but it was a break from their normal daily lives.
Mediaeval drama definition and meaning :-
Definition -
"Mediaeval drama is something, which is relating to the Middle Ages : of or relating to the period of European history from about A.D. 500 to about 1500."
"Literature which is related to the characteristics of the Middle Ages."
Meaning -
With its roots medi-, meaning "middle", and ev-, meaning "age", mediaeval literally means "of the Middle Ages". In this case, middle means "between the Roman empire and the Renaissance" that is, after the fall of the great Roman state and before the "rebirth" of culture that we call the Renaissance. This same period used to be called the "Dark Ages", since it was believed that in these years civilization all but vanished. And indeed, for most Europeans in these centuries, it was a time of poverty, famine, plague, and superstition, rather than the age of magic, dazzling swordplay, towering castles, and knights in splendid armour displayed in today's graphic novels and video games.
Origin and Development of Mediaeval Drama :-
"As Christian Church grew in power, its opposition to the stage became more effective. Plays were prohibited and actors proscribed in city after city throughout the Roman Empire" (A History of English Literature, William Vaughn Moody, chapter 5)
Well before the Norman conquest, while the Roman empire was dissolving and the Christian Church was growing in power, the Roman drama was proscribed. The demand for spectacles did not decrease, though. People attended performances on market days (jugglers, minstrels) and at festival occasions (country folk plays, which contributed to the formation of traditional figures such as Robin Hood, maid Marian, the Green Dragon). Pageants were also organised near the city gate to welcome the official visit of the King or of people of rank. Pageants were pantomimes which involved traditional allegorical figures, i.e. they were spectacular displays with an elaborate scenic background.
Many scholars surmise it is from the regular service of the mass that the mediaeval drama emerged. The mass was conducted in a language most of the people could not understand: Latin. Moreover their knowledge of the Bible was quite superficial. For these reasons music and charts were used to underline a great part of the service. Painted rolls picturing the principal events of the Bible stories were also displayed since most of the people could not read.
Around the 11th century the services started being dramatised. At the beginning very few additions were made. Then episodes from Christ's life were performed in which the priests covered all the roles. When more episodes were added and more people took part in these Liturgical Plays (in Latin), the churches became too small to contain them all. The compositions were therefore displaced to the churchyard, later to the market places or the city streets.
In Europe the plays which dealt with subjects taken from the Bible were called Mystery plays while the plays which told the lives of the saints were usually called Morality plays. This distinction did not apply to English Liturgical plays which were currently called Miracle plays.
By the 12th century the roles, formerly held by the priests, were taken over by laymen. When the priests ceased organising the performances, the trade guilds took charge of them. Drama was still liturgical, but the plays were now performed in vernacular.
The greatest stimulus to the transformation from liturgical to non liturgical drama was the institution of the summer feast of Corpus Christi in 1311. On that occasion the guilds used to present a series of plays about the Christian story. Fear of death was the main theme.
By the 14th century miracle plays were so popular that they were performed in almost every large town. They were arranged in sequences or cycles and could last several days. Each guild assumed the entire charge of its own particular play.
For example :-
The Chester cycle (of 25 plays)
The Coventry cycle (of 42 plays)
The Wakefield cycle (of 31 plays)
The York cycle (of 48 plays)
The aforementioned four cycles have come down to us completely. These religious performances have reached their greatest popularity between the 14th and 15th centuries but continued to be represented until the sixteenth century.
Mediaeval literature :-
The Mediaeval period runs from the end of Late Antiquity in the fourth century to the English Renaissance of the late fifteenth century.
The early portion of the Mediaeval period in England is dominated by Anglo-Saxons, whose language is incomprehensible to today's speakers of English. That early portion is known as the Old English period. The Old English period came to an end with the Norman Invasion of 1066. Normans spoke a dialect of French later called Anglo-Norman.
Alongside Anglo-Norman, Old English developed into Middle English. Middle English is a distinct variety of English, influenced in large part by Anglo-Norman French. For example, Old English speakers did not distinguish between /f/ and /v/. Just like speakers of Modern German, OE speakers would use both sounds ([f] and [v]) for the letter <f>. "Aefre '' was pronounced [ever]. But French speakers do distinguish these two sounds. (Vous means "you" and fou means ``crazy.") After the Conquest, English people had to distinguish between, for example, veal and feel. So, new sounds, new words, new syntax—all contribute to a significant change in the English language. And to a new literature.
The Invasion put French-speaking people at the highest levels of society. Families that ruled England also ruled and held land in France. William the Conqueror was also Duke of Normandy, and the English King continued to hold that office and its lands until the thirteenth century. Only a handful of Anglo-Saxon families remained in any positions of power. In England, French was the language of education and literature. It was not an obvious choice for Chaucer to write his Canterbury Tales in English. Consequently, the High Middle Ages in England were characterised culturally by their close relation to French and Italian arts. This will change in the late thirteenth century as England and France come to loggerheads.
Literary selections from various centuries will give you a very rough idea of the wide variety of literature circulating in Mediaeval England.
12th Century
In the twelfth century, perhaps the most accomplished vernacular writer was an English woman named Marie de France. She wrote in Anglo-Norman. (We will read her in an English translation.) Marie was one of the main forces behind the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table. In France, Chretien de Troyes was writing Arthurian romances for Marie of Champagne. Other Anglo-Norman writers are described in our authors page.
The works of Aristotle and other Greeks became widely available in the twelfth century. Translated into Latin for the first time, they fueled a renaissance. Universities in Bologna, Padua, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge took up the teaching of logic and science. Most reading was done by cloistered clerics or by French aristocracy. There was almost no social cachet in being an author or in owning books.
13th Century
The thirteenth century marks the flowering of Latin literature in England. The reign of King John (1167–1216) is characterised in part by an increasingly deep cultural separation between France and England. Anti-papal attitudes (Oxford professor Robert Grosseteste called Pope Innocent IV the Antichrist) and a growing sense of nationalism helped to fuel native literary talent. English literature comes into its own. Still, very little survives, and most of it is in Latin.
The "preaching orders" of monks came into existence: the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Scholar A.G. Rigg says, "They formed a new kind of intellectual elite....Their evangelical fervour and commitment to academic training contributed to the rise of the English universities." Their squabbling and venal excesses do not become objects of widespread literary satire until the fourteenth century. In this century, they help to increase literacy and the stock of books in England.
14th Century
During the fourteenth century English literature comes into its own. This is the century of John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Langland. We also have a number of surviving vernacular romances such as Sir Orfeo, as well as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (We will read these in the original Middle English.)
The Battle of Bannockburn (1314) and the defeat of the English by the Glorious Scots is only one of many upheavals and revolutions during this tumultuous century. Other calamitous events include the Black Death (or Plague) in the middle of the century; the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and the Hundred Years' War.
Perhaps the single most important development for our purposes is the wholesale replacement of the French language in government and law by the English language. Anti-French attitudes (due to the war, among other things) helped displace French from polite society and from literature. John Gower, Chaucer's friend, wrote one of his major poems in Latin, another in French, and a third in English.
15th Century
1422 marks the death of Henry IV and a subtle shift from mediaeval to humanistic themes in literature. For our purposes, one of the interesting developments concerns the Mystery Plays. (Mysteries were unions or guilds.) These plays were performed in a number of towns and involved much of the working population. They retell the story of the Bible, sometimes humorously.
Another remarkable literary phenomena of the early fifteenth century is Scottish interest in Chaucer. Like today's "fan fiction," Scots authors copied Chaucer's style so well that for centuries some of their stories were thought to be Chaucer's own.
At the end of the century, a German silversmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented a moveable type. The printing revolution made books cheaper and more widely accessible. The first successful printer in England was William Caxton. He printed self-help books and romances, including the tales of King Arthur. He also printed a book on chess.
Conclusion :-
Thus to conclude, the point is clear that Mediaeval drama includes mystery, Morality, and Miracle plays. Mainly that kind of dramas were based on Religious theme. And as specially biblical stories. And widely popular among people of that time. And even now also.
Words :- 1980
References :-
https://www.literature-no-trouble.com/medieval-drama/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medieval
https://medievaleurope.mrdonn.org/plays.html
No comments:
Post a Comment