The Intertextuality of Late Medieval Art and Drama

Abstract

a subject of wide interest and divergent views throughout the history of modern scholarship. It is perhaps fair to say that at least one major issue has now been put to rest, namely, the proposition that the religious drama generated various iconographic motifs in medieval Christian art. Foremost among the proponents of this theory was Emile Male, though others in more recent times, including W. L. Hildburgh, M. D. Anderson, and Otto Paecht, have brought forward specific arguments that attempted to advance the thesis.' The theory, to which A. M. Nagler has applied the label primo/dopo (based on a long-standing feud between the followers of Puccini and Gluck summarized as primo le parole, dopo la musica),2 has evinced no credible evidence. In response, for example, to M. D. Anderson's claim that the Norwich Cathedral roof bosses were inspired by the lost Norwich Whitsun cycle of guild plays,3 one must still ask two fundamental questions: (1) In the face of the absent dramatic text, how does she know? And (2) even if the influence was there, what does it tell us either about the bosses or about the plays? Recent scholarly studies, including Nagler's provocative last chapter in The Medieval Religious Stage: Shapes and Phantoms and Pamela Sheingorn's helpful methodological essay on Using Medieval Art in the Study of Medieval Drama,4 have been influential in dismissing the approach as not only unprovable but also unenlightened. What then is the consensus about this relationship in our time? In recent years, it has been examined most conspicuously in the series of monographs on Early Drama, Art, and Music, sponsored by the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University. The prevailing dogma concerning the interrelations of the two forms of artistic expression is represented most explicitly by Clifford Davidson's opening remarks in Drama and Art, the introductory guide to the series of subject lists of extant and lost art in selected counties and cities of England. Davidson begins with the incontestable position New Literary History, 1991, 22: 317-337