Writing Before the Eye: The N-Town Woman Taken in Adultery and the Medieval Ministry Play

The aim of this paper is to examine the presence of nonhuman animals in French medieval drama, with a particular focus on horses and other species brought to perform in liturgical mysteries. Beginning with a brief account of the different ways of representing animals by means of mechanical objects and human impersonations, I then turn to discuss the performance of real animals in the Mystère de la passion, which was staged in the city of Mons in 1501. My analysis is informed by the study of the Livre de conduite du régisseur et le compte de dépenses pour le Mystère de la passion, a work that details the play’s every single animal expense, as well as the specific part played by animals. I will show how the performance unveils a modern zooscenographic understanding of stagecraft that turns the nonhuman animal into an element of paramount importance for the success of the play

Clipperton Atoll (Île de La Passion) is the only atoll in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) ecoregion and, owing to its isolation, possesses several endemic species and is likely an important stepping stone between Oceania, the remainder of the TEP, including other oceanic islands and the west coast of Central America. We describe the biodiversity at this remote atoll from shallow water to depths greater than one thousand meters using a mixture of technologies (SCUBA, stereo baited remote underwater video stations, manned submersible, and deep-sea drop cameras). Seventy-four unique taxa of invertebrates were identified during our expedition. The majority (70%) of these taxa were confined to the top 400 m and consisted mostly of sessile organisms. Decapod crustaceans and black corals (Antipatharia) had the broadest depth ranges, 100–1,497 m and 58–967 m, respectively. Decapods were correlated with the deepest depths, while hard corals were correlated with the shallow depths. There were 96 different fish taxa from 41 families and 15 orders, of which 70% were restricted to depths <200 m. While there was a decreasing trend in richness for both fish and invertebrate taxa with depth, these declines were not linear across the depth gradient. Instead, peaks in richness at ∼200 m and ∼750 m coincided with high turnover due to the appearance of new taxa and disappearance of other taxa within the community and is likely associated with the strong oxygen minimum zone that occurs within the region. The overall depth effect was stronger for fishes compared with invertebrates, which may reflect ecological preferences or differences in taxonomic resolution among groups. The creation of a no-take marine reserve 12 nautical miles around the atoll in 2016 will help conserve this unique and relatively intact ecosystem, which possesses high predator abundance.

Lamed. O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite, et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus! quoniam vindemiavit me, ut locutus est Dominus, in die irae furoris sui. Lamed. O all ye that pass by t...

Gothic <i>leiþu</i>, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages

The noun tsara'at appears about two dozen times in the Hebrew Bible, almost exclusively in Leviticus, where it is used to describe a state of ritual defilement manifested as a scaly condition of the skin, a condition of cloth, leather, and the walls of houses. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, negac tsara'at was translated as aphe lepras; in the Latin Vulgate, this became plega leprae. These words in Greek and Latin implied a condition that spread over the body, not a term of ritual impurity. Tsara'at has continued to be translated as "leprosy," even though this term is not appropriate, as there was no leprosy as we know it in the Middle East during the time period the Hebrew Bible was written. Others have suggested that the proper translation of tsara'at is "mold." The recent identification of a specific mold (Stachybotrys sp.) that contaminates buildings and causes respiratory distress, memory loss, and rash, and the fact that mold has been present for millennia, lend support to the translation of tsara'at as "mold."

The Theater of Scholastic Erudition Jody Enders For centuries now, the suspense created by the anticipation of a verdict coaxed from arguments pro and contra has kept audiences spellbound as readers and/or spectators awaited that most crucial of dénouements: the rendering of judgment. It should not be surprising, then, that during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a similar disputational spectacle was drawing numerous and varied observers to the Parisian rue du Fouarre. Twice a year at Advent and Lent, all classes were canceled at the University of Paris so that the maximum number of university personnel might attend one of the most intriguing shows of the Middle Ages: the quodlibet.' Students and teachers, civil and religious authorities all flocked to the streets surrounding the Sorbonne as other university activities ground to a halt to allow them to witness and participate in this academic rite of passage for students of theology.2 If, however, the quodlibet did indeed inspire the public to turn out in droves, then the operative question is why: what was the appeal? I argue here that the quodlibet continues the dramatic declamatory tradition canonized and transmitted by Greco-Roman rhetorical practice. Characterized by such crucial theatrical components as theatrical space, costume, gesture, conflict, and audience participation, the quodlibet offered to medieval spectators a ritual spectacle that was as much a protodrama as the Christian liturgy.3 Still, it has yet to be properly acknowledged as what the late O. B. Hardison dubbed one of many unexpected places where we discover new origins of medieval drama. In 1925 in a "first orientational study," Palemón Glorieux made an eloquent plea for the scholarly rehabilitation of the quodlibet as a "literary genre" whose history had yet to be written (LQ, I, 6-11). Even within the framework of his avowedly modest goal of furnishing helpful background information about the "fifty years following the death of Saint Thomas" (I, 6), 341 342Comparative Drama Glorieux speculated that the quodlibet had literary repercussions so extraordinary (II, 7-8) that its participants were "actors" (I, 21) in a two-act play (I, 17). While his penchant for the theatrical register derived more from a dramatic writing style than from any systematic generic analysis, Glorieux 's intuition was correct: the quodlibet was in fact a form in which there was a crucial commingling of academic ritual and dramatic representation that has remained virtually unexplored in studies of the theater. However, where Glorieux theorized that the literary emphasis in the medieval theology curriculum might have encouraged a literary style of redaction of the quodlibet (I, 51-55), the converse is equally plausible: namely, that the performance of the quodlibet might have encouraged a scholastic style of dramatic conception.4 For example, in the striking case of Arnoul Gréban, we find a fifteenth-century dramatist distilling the entire Mystère de la Passion into the answer to a series of scholastic quaestiones. Apparently influenced by two specific quodlibeta of Thomas Aquinas ("utrum voluntas daemonum sit obstinata in malo" ["whether the will of demons is fixed on evil"] and "utrum fuerit magis conveniens quod persona Filii assumeret humanam naturam quam alia persona divina" ["whether it was more appropriate for the person of the Son to assume a human nature rather than a different person of the Trinity"]), Gréban is reported to have composed the play "seulement pour monstrer la difference du peché du deable et de l'omme et pourquoy le peché de l'homme ha esté reparé et non pas celluy du deable" ("only to show the difference between the sin of the Devil and that of Man and why the sin of Man was redeemed while that of the Devil was not").5 The introduction to his mystère might just have easily have announced a quodlibetal disputation: S'argurons que sy et que non comme saint Thomas l'a traictié soubtillement en son traictié sur le tiers livre des Sentences. Si ourrez arguz et deffenses pourquoy le mal pechié dampnable du deable fust irreparable, condempné a l'éternel feu; et pourquoy l'omme alegié fust, non obstant son pechié tres grief. (11. 1692-1701) Thus we will argue sic et...

Reviewed by: Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage by Kurt A. Schreyer Horacio Sierra Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage. By Kurt A. Schreyer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014; pp. 280. The stylistic divide between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is often portrayed as a chasm so wide that this artistic transition seems more like [End Page 764] a revolutionary coup d’état than a gradual development. This notion, popularized by Jacob Burckhardt’s seminal The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) and reaffirmed by many scholars and students of the Renaissance, has taken on the cast of nearly unquestionable truth. However, Kurt Schreyer is one of many recent academics to add nuance to our views of how medieval practices continued to influence Renaissance artists well into the seventeenth century. In this book Schreyer soundly argues that Shakespeare’s plays are deeply indebted to the late-medieval English mystery plays. This compelling argument is buttressed by a substantive analysis of the Chester Banns (a 1500s announcement of the performance of guild-produced religious drama), and by perceptive readings of stage properties in three plays (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, and Macbeth). Schreyer’s work is an excellent addition to studies that showcase the importance of examining Shakespeare’s innovative employment of medieval theatrical traditions, such as Michael O’Connell’s Blood Begetting Blood: Shakespeare and the Mysteries. More importantly, it augments a growing field of research that revises the temporal boundaries with which we frame cultural movements. The material theatre is rarely given critical notice in the study of Shakespeare (Andrew Sofer’s The Stage Life of Props is a notable exception) because so little of it is mentioned in his stage directions. One can think of the handkerchief in Othello or the crown in King Lear. Schreyer offers an examination of three elements he categorizes as stage props or materials: the ass’s head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the space of Purgatory in Hamlet, and the knocking sound at the gate in Macbeth. He posits that each of these are remnants of medieval mystery plays with which the audience would have been familiar, and that as a dramatic craftsman acutely aware of theatrical history and the physical requirements of the stage, Shakespeare makes something new out of these traditional tools. Schreyer argues convincingly for the relevance of the mystery cycles of plays during the Renaissance by considering how the transient and temporary theatres of each era valued the visual and spectacle. Such a point seems obvious enough, but the expressed medieval/Renaissance dichotomy obscures spectators’ desire to see something flashy, whether in the thirteenth, seventeenth, or twenty-first century. After all, mystery plays featured angels, devils, wayward men, and biblical stars engaging in violent and miraculous events, from Noah and the Flood to Jesus’ harrowing of hell. Many imagine these portrayals to have been crude and simplistic, but Schreyer counters that medieval guilds spent considerable sums of money as producers and directors to showcase their craftsmanship, citing, for example, an early Banns’ call for goldsmiths to “‘magyfe’ their craft to deck out King Herod” and for the “‘3 kings Royall’ to look ‘worthy to appear’” (61). Similarly, he mentions Phillip Henslowe’s famed theatrical diary and its 1598 catalog of ornate and expensive props as a parallel to the pride the medieval artisans took in producing finely wrought items for the stage. In his first close analysis, Schreyer draws on the whimsical and comical delights of Midsummer, nowhere more apparent than in Bottom’s magical transformation into a man with the head of an ass. While many scholars have noted allusions to Ovid’s Metamorphoses in this play, Schreyer points us toward the talking ass from the story of Balaam in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, a narrative often portrayed in medieval drama, and offers more history of the personified ass through Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda featuring the pope as a monstrous hermaphrodite with an ass’s head. Again, Schreyer does not merely present the connection, but analyzes how Shakespeare makes new use of this tradition by appropriating it to...

Analgesia and anesthesia: etymology and literary history of related Greek words.

Dear Cécile, I feel so honoured and privileged, as a former colleague and a close friend, to be able to initiate this dialogue across languages, cultures and continents with you. Since 1995, you have been publishing poems, short stories, novels and essays, while leading a career as Associate Professor of English at the University of Paris 12 and continue to bring out remarkable volumes of such creations, winning several prestigious awards on the way. However, I would like to single out my favourite text – A fleur de mots, La passion de l'écriture (2004) which is an incredibly beautiful essay on writing generally and your own creative process. I personally think that this book needs to be translated into English, without any further delay, for the benefit of the Anglophone audience worldwide. There you refer to the page as "this strange country of water and reflections" and describe your passion for words, specifying that there is "no special time for writing". The need for space, "a room of one's own", seems to be still the preoccupation of many writers. At the same time, because of your diverse peregrinations (an artist mother who had lived in India, a maternal family in Canada, relatives in Belgium, and your husband's roots in Tunisia, students in Finland), you have travelled to and discovered the history and memory of nations and peoples. Is Space or Time that stirs you most into writing?

Prise dans une phase de transition religieuse, l’histoire de l’une des premières saintes de l’Afrique romaine, Perpétue, martyrisée en 203 après J.-C. à Carthage, donne à voir l’effet de chevauchement des formes de sensibilité. Le récit de son martyre, la Passion de Perpétue et Félicité , est riche d’épisodes illustrant la confrontation des époques et des rapports d’historicité : les chrétiens les plus convaincus, notamment ceux qui apparaissent dans les sources martyrologiques, veulent s’inscrire dans un nouveau régime sensible, mais continuent de vivre dans une société où ils ont appris à se comporter en pères ou mères de famille, en citoyens libres ou esclaves, en civils ou soldats. Le récit de l’exécution de Perpétue contient ce type d’opposition entre deux modes d’existence devenus inconciliables, comme le montre en particulier ce moment où la sainte, renversée dans l’arène par une vache furieuse, voit sa tunique se déchirer et ses cheveux se détacher. La chrétienne ramène un pan de son vêtement sur sa cuisse dénudée, puis cherche une fibule pour se recoiffer. Se devine à travers ces gestes l’exigence chrétienne du martyre joyeux : la sainte ne veut pas être prise pour une pleureuse ou une suppliante. L’éclairage ethnologique peut aider à mieux saisir les enjeux sensibles de cet épisode minuscule. L’histoire de Perpétue gagne à être lue au prisme des techniques corporelles et de leur savoir partagé. La longue durée des gestes émotifs entre aussi en correspondance avec ce que Aby Warburg a pu désigner comme les résurgences ou survivances de très anciennes manières de faire, repérables dans l’art comme dans le monde social. L’enquête de Ernesto De Martino sur les prefiche de l’Italie méridionale permet d’élargir encore l’analyse : les gestes attendus précèdent l’émotion collective, ils la génèrent et la résument.

Le pote ngre, je veux dire, ce pote dont le coeur est filiale pulsation au rythme du tam-tam d'Afrique, parle ce langage des fleurs, exprime ses sentiments et ides travers les images, aussi dans un langage lmentaire par-del spirituel.(p.18) Faut-il, ici, parler de l'intuition comme source d'inspiration potique, parce que connaissance non rationnelle relevant du simple sentimentou prorer sur la maeutique potique, c'est--dire l'art d'accoucher les pomes.Bien au contraire, il s'agit cans d'interroger l'espace textuel de Prince Arnie Matoko, peupl de "mtaphores obsdantes", et o les mots se heurtent, se pressent, se chevauchent, coulent harmonieusement et se groupent en images (Lablenie, cite par Mpala-Lutebele, 2008, p.129).En d'autres termes, ce travail s'attle interprter des symboles obscurs et flamboyants autour du substantif coeur, sige de toute sensation et motion, pour en faire dcouvrir le sens cach, mettant en relief, tout au moins, les motivations psychologiques inconscientes du pote.De ce fait, il parat sant et imprieux d'apporter compendieusement des prcisions conceptuelles relatives aux vocables "symbolique" et "coeur", tout en considrant les notions sous-jacentes.Le terme "symbolique", l'oeil non voil, renvoie illico aux symboles, puisque la symbolique, en croire Le Robert, est la thorie des symboles, c'est--dire un ensemble des relations et des interprtations lies un symbole qui peut tre un objet, une image, un mot crit ou un son qui reprsente Rsum: La prsente tude porte sur la symbolique du coeur dans l'oeuvre potique de Prince Arnie Matoko.Elle consiste analyser et interprter la vie intrieure du pote par le truchement des symboles lis au substantif "coeur", sige de toute sensation et motion, pour en dbusquer le sens cach, mettant en relief, tout au moins, les motivations psychologiques inconscientes de ce dernier.Allant des interrogations significatives aux hypothses mises, en passant par l'exploitation des axes bien structurs, et s'appuyant essentiellement sur l'hermneutique et la psychocritique, cette tude a dmontr que la posie de Prince Arnie Matoko, saupoudre de mythe personnel et de mtaphores obsdantes, est, en bonne partie, rattache l'expression de la passion et de la rvolte du "je personnel", mais aussi, et surtout, du "je collectif".Ceci dsigne, par-dessus tout, la plurivocit de la symbolique du coeur chez Prince Arnie Matoko dont l'inconscient potique, travers ses vers, dvoile la virginit de son me et celle des autres.

It was long believed that Arnoul Greban, the author of the Mystère de la Passion, was born in the city of Le Mans and it was often emphasized his links with Paris, where his work was played. Yet, we now know that he was a native of Cambrai. Examination of the language he uses reveals that it bears sharp Picardy markings. We have noted here some graphic forms and especially twenty typical words: admonstrer, amais, amés, bescousse, broignee, bucquier, depostir, despaisier, encepper, ensoinne, esseullé, famis, forbastir (ou forbatre), fouans, hastereaux, loudier, palletoz, puraine, rapostir, scrutiner. We have been able to add two lexical picardisms, hitherto unknown, fremeux, which is the past participle of the verb formouvoir, et brioler, which is the good lesson in a passage often modified by the copyists.

The Passion Isabeau (1398) and its Relationship to Fifteenth-Century Mystères de la Passion

Etalage complaisant! The Torments of Christ in French Passion Plays Véronique Plesch The study of the mystère de la Passion in France is in fact the study of the extraordinary expansion of the dramatic material , from the earliest plays of the fourteenth century to the cyclical monuments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which were performed over several days. This paper aims at showing how the development of sequences of the torments of Christ contributed to the general expansion of French Passion plays—its amplification to use a term from the poetic arts.1 It will also show how these violent and bloody scenes, so often misunderstood by the modern reader, are in fact far from being an "étalage complaisant des supplices du Christ, avec une fatigante multiplication de détails atroces" ("the pandering display of Christ's torture, with a tiresome multiplication of atrocious details"), as Alfred Jeanroy called them.2 These scenes are certainly not the product of the authors' sadism or even, as has been traditionally considered , aimed at satisfying the vilest and lowest instincts of the rabble.' We will see that the ways in which these scenes are expanded follow specific guidelines that in turn reveal their meaning . In other words, these scenes are expanded because they are meaningful: the modalities of their expansion are rooted in their meaning. In order to show this, I will first survey the dramatic and textual means used to amplify the scenes, then 1 will demonstrate that many of their sources can be traced back to exegetical readings and finally conclude by determining the kind of response sought by the texts likewise expanded. I base my analysis on four of the most important French Passion plays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: two fourteenth -century plays, the Palatine Passion4 and the Passion Sainte-Geneviève;'' and two fifteenth-century plays, the Passion a"Arras? and the Passion by Arnoul Greban.7 The scenes of 458 Véronique Plesch459 torture that will be considered take place in the Passion narrative between Christ's arrest and the departure for the way to Calvary, during the different moments of the trial of Christ.8 The question of the modalities used for the expansion of the material in French mystères has been previously addressed. For example, in her 1959 doctoral dissertation Mary Faith McKean identified five "techniques of dramatic presentation" that allowed the fatiste (the playwright) to develop the Gospel account: expansion , conversational realism, explicitation, reiteration, and objectivation of subjective notions.' These categories are still valid and can be applied to sequences of torments. "' But scenes of torments in plays are perhaps more than anything else primarily visual sequences. To state the obvious, gesture is fundamental to physical violence. To limit the staging of these scenes to a purely visual evocation—that is, to leave them mute—would give them a status secondary to scenes with words. As a result, the means of the expansion of these particular scenes are of a different order than that which McKean described. Also, gesture needs to be somehow fixed in the text, and, for this, stage directions are not sufficient. The sequences devoted to Christ's Passion before the way to Calvary are developed through an increase in the number of scenes, in the number of actors intervening and of actions performed , and through dramatic dialogue. The four Gospels provide the narrative skeleton of the story and fix the different types of torments: the mocking of Christ, the crowning with thorns, the flagellation. Over time, the Gospel accounts were complemented by scenes that, while not specifically mentioned by the Evangelists , were products of exegetical elaborations. For example, the motif of the ductio Christi" the leading of Christ from one place to the other, is an occasion for more torture. The Evangelists use the verbs duxerunt or adduxeruntr~ but do not mention the brutalities that are found in mystères such as the Passion SainteGenevi ève, the Passion d'Arras, and the Passion of Greban.'' Likewise, exegetical elaborations account for tortures occurring during the night following Christ's arrest which do not appear in the Gospels. In the Gospel of John. Christ is simply led...

Der vorliegende Essay untersucht eine enthusiastische christliche Volksbewegung und ihre Rolle beim Bau der neuen Abteikirche Sankt Salvator in Sankt Martial von Limoges in den 1020er Jahren. Die ersten Erscheinungsformen dieser Religiosität waren die Gottesfriedensversammlungen in den Jahren 990-1030 ; Pilgermassen eilten durch das Land, die Heiligenverehrung und damit verbundene Liturgien wurden initiiert oder neu belebt und schließlich verbreiteten sich ikonoklastische „Häresien“ im einfachen Volk, die die Kirche und ihre Liturgie ablehnten. In Limoges flammte bei einer Gottesfriedensversammlung 994 der Kult um Sankt Martial auf und von nun an eilten alljährlich in der Fastenzeit Scharen von Pilgern herbei. 1018 wurde die Menge zu Tode getrampelt ; nach Ansicht Adémars de Chabannes bestärkte dieses Ereignis anti-kirchliche Bewegungen. In diesem Schmelztiegel im Limoges der 20er Jahre des neuen Jahrhunderts wurde der Bau einer neuen Kirche maiori amplitude in Angriff genommen, deren Grundriss auf die Aufnahme der Pilgerscharen zugeschnitten war. Die neue Architektur gewährte Laien, einfachen Leuten aus dem Volk, Männern und Frauen einen bis dahin nie dagewesenen Zugang. Mit den großen Pilgerkirchen eröffnete sich für die Pilger ein neues Zeitalter, in dem neue religiöse, ökonomische, soziale und intellektuelle Bewegungen entstanden.