
Play Time
Gender, Anti-Semitism and Temporality in Medieval Biblical Drama
Daisy Black(Author)
Manchester University Press
Published on 27. October 2020
Book
Hardback
248 pages
978-1-5261-4686-1 (ISBN)
Description
This book presents an important re-theorisation of gender and anti-Semitism in medieval biblical drama. It charts conflicts staged between dramatic personae in plays that represent theological transitions, including the Incarnation, Flood, Nativity and Bethlehem slaughter. Interrogating the Christian preoccupation with what it asserted was a superseded Jewish past, it asks how models of supersession and typology are subverted when placed in dramatic dialogue with characters who experience time differently. The book employs theories of gender, performance, anti-Semitism, queer theory and periodisation to complicate readings of early theatre's biblical matriarchs and patriarchs. Dealing with frequently taught plays as well as less familiar material, the book is essential reading for specialist, undergraduate and postgraduate researchers working on medieval performance, gender and queer studies, Jewish-Christian studies and time. -- .
Reviews / Votes
'This book was a pleasure to read. The writing is clear and accessible; the voice is engaging, with sections of lovely phrasing and surprising humour.'The Review of English Studies
'Given Black's clear and accessible handling of theory, and the ways in which she embeds her argument in the critical history of each play she addresses, I look forward to assigning her work to my graduate students. Overall, Daisy Black's Play Time has much to offer scholars of early English drama and of literature and culture more broadly.'
Studies in the Age of Chaucer
'Given its focus on some of the greatest hits of the canon of early English drama and its fresh and insightful readings of familiar texts, Play Time will reward the attention of both scholars of medieval drama and those working in adjacent fields... Black demonstrates conclusively that multiple temporalities exist playfully side by side within medieval biblical drama and that the hegemony of Christian time is always under threat from history, which rarely is content to remain in the past.'
The Medieval Review -- .
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Illustrations
5 black & white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 222 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
448 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5261-4686-1 (9781526146861)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2020
1st Edition
Manchester University Press
€181.99
Available for download

E-Book
11/2020
1st Edition
Manchester University Press
from
€181.99
Available for download
Person
Daisy Black is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton -- .
Content
Introduction: what God was doing before he created the world
1 The old man and the pregnant virgin: linear time and Jewish conversion in the N-Town plays
2 Grave new world: fantasies of supersession and explosive questions in the York and Chester Flood plays
3 Time out of joint: queering the Nativity in the Towneley Second Shepherds' Play
4 Passion meets Passover: temporal origami in the Towneley Herod the Great
5 Conclusion: the spectator's God's-eye view
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index -- .
1 The old man and the pregnant virgin: linear time and Jewish conversion in the N-Town plays
2 Grave new world: fantasies of supersession and explosive questions in the York and Chester Flood plays
3 Time out of joint: queering the Nativity in the Towneley Second Shepherds' Play
4 Passion meets Passover: temporal origami in the Towneley Herod the Great
5 Conclusion: the spectator's God's-eye view
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index -- .