Acts of Consumption: Spiritual and Material Food in The Towneley Plays

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Wakefield First and Second Shepherds Plays as Complements in Psychology and ParodyLois RoneyLois Roney Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 58, Number 3Jul., 1983 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2848964 Views: 23Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1983 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Jamie Beckett ‘With myrth and gam, / To the lawde of this lam’. Shepherds and the Agnus Dei in the York and Towneley Plays, European Medieval Drama 21 (Jan 2017): 141–158.https://doi.org/10.1484/J.EMD.5.116051K.A. Bello, J.O. Ajayi Near-infrared absorbing squarylium dyes, Dyes and Pigments 31, no.22 (Jun 1996): 79–87.https://doi.org/10.1016/0143-7208(95)00086-0Gary D. Schmidt ?Vides festinare pastores: The medieval artistic vision of shepherding and the manipulation of cultural expectation in the Secunda pastorum, Neophilologus 76, no.22 (Apr 1992): 290–304.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00210177Patrick Grant Fundamentals, (Jan 1992): 15–52.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22116-5_2Fumio Matsui Optical Recording Systems, (Jan 1990): 117–140.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2046-1_10

Allusions to the Lamb of God have often been noted in the York Offering of the Shepherds and the Towneley Prima and Secunda Pastorum, the comic pastors aligned with the coming of Christ. Yet in the period of these performances the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, represented more than we might first glean from visual iconography, or the several lines spoken at Mass. The term Agnus Dei could also refer to a popular devotional object with supposedly magical or apotropaic powers, the properties of which-I argue-are playfully referenced in these performances. I consider how and why these popular amulets might have shaped the plays, and particularly how this reading might offer a new approach to understanding the wealth of humour within them.

The Christian content of the Towneley Prima and Secunda Pastorum has dominated critical treatment of these dramas, for scholars have rightly seen such content as contributing centrally to the overall religious mis sion of the Biblical dramas with which these plays have traditionally been aligned. The meaning of Christ's nativity for the unredeemed poor, for example?a class of people exemplified quite vividly by the shepherds to whom the nativity is first announced?is unquestionably one of the most important concerns of the Prima and Secunda Pastorum. Yet as all readers of these plays are aware, the Biblical action and the typological allegories based upon it are set in an environment that is specifically defined as English, with the shepherds often commenting at length, and in great detail, on their roles in the pastoral economy of late medieval and early modern England. Much of the dialogue in the plays, for example, relates to the working conditions of the peasants who were experiencing newly emerging relationships both to the land (as the economic conditions of their employment changed) and to the animals that were so important to the people involved in England's developing wool trade. Using insights from the emerging fields of environmental history and the history of ani mal/human relationships, this essay will analyze the ways in which the plays address medieval humans and animals in their rural ecological contexts. It will also demonstrate, I hope, the explanatory power that these approaches can bring to the late medieval and early modern literary canon. Before beginning close analysis of the action and dialogue in the plays, it is worth reminding readers of the environmental underpinnings of the shepherds' situation. As scholars have noted, the shepherds in the P?rn?zn? Secunda Pastorum are represented as living on land that has recently been enclosed by its owners; that is, the rural economy is clearly represented in these plays as undergoing a change from grain-based to sheep-based, and the land is concomitantly shifting its function from arable to pasture. To summarize the oft-told story about this shift, enclosure involved a pro cess whereby manorial lords appropriated peasant property, amalgamated

The purchase in 1922 by the late Mr. Henry E. Huntington of the unique manuscript of the Towneley plays has given permanent domicile in the beautiful Huntington Library and Art Gallery at San Marino, California, to an invaluable document that has passed through many hands during the past century and a quarter. In its new home this document has become accessible for fresh study to many American scholars who had never before been privileged to see it.

The Towneley Plays: Huntington Library MS HM 1

The colour of food is one of the most important factors affecting consumers’ purchasing decision. Although there are many colour spaces, the most widely used colour space in the food industry is L*a*b* colour space. Conventionally, the colour of foods is analysed with a colorimeter that measures small and non-representative areas of the food and the measurements usually vary depending on the point where the measurement is taken. This leads to the development of alternative colour analysis techniques. In this work, a simple and alternative method to measure the colour of foods known as “computer vision system” is presented and justified. With the aid of the computer vision system, foods that are homogenous and uniform in colour and shape could be classified with regard to their colours in a fast, inexpensive and simple way. This system could also be used to distinguish the defectives from the non-defectives. Quality parameters of meat and dairy products could be monitored without any physical contact, which causes contamination during sampling.

Two of the key factors that drive agricultural growth and food production in India are access to arable land and utilizable water resources. These are examined with particular reference to their regional variation in order to make an assessment of the magnitude of the food security challenge they pose for the country. Recent official estimates of groundwater exploitation in India are compared with actual negative physical, social and economic consequences of over-exploitation, as are evident in different regions, and their implications for national food security discussed. The analyses show that the real food security and water management challenge lies in the mismatch between water availability and agricultural water demand: high demands occur in water scarce but agriculturally prosperous regions and low demands in naturally water-abundant but agriculturally backward regions. Serious groundwater depletion problems, which occur in the naturally water-scarce but surplus food-producing regions, magnify the challenge. The small area of arable land per capita is a major reason for low agricultural water demand in regions that have abundant water. Sustainability of well irrigation in the naturally water-scarce regions, which is the backbone of India’s food security, could be achieved through judicious investment in surface water projects which encourage direct irrigation and replenishment of over-exploited aquifers. Other strategies include: pro rata pricing of electricity in the farm sector; volumetric pricing of water from public irrigation systems; improving the efficiency of utilization of green water or the rainwater held in the soil profile; preventing depletion of the residual soil moisture in the field after crop harvest by reducing the fallow period; and reducing the use of water through a shift to low water consuming crops

For some industry clusters, being local may not be enough. A study of the media industries in the Soho district of central London suggests that global links are also essential.