Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Medieval Europe showing locations of principal play-texts and records cited in this study
- Map 2 Enlargement of central area showing locations of liturgical and feast-day plays as defined in chapter 1
- Map 3 Enlargement of central area showing locations of civic and community plays as defined in chapter 2
- Introduction: Christian Europe and the Play of God
- PART ONE THE THEATRICAL COMMUNITY
- PART TWO THE THEATRICAL TEXT
- 4 Creation and Fall
- 5 The Covenant and the Kingdom
- 6 Prophets and precursors of Redemption
- 7 The Birth and childhood of Jesus
- 8 The public life of Jesus
- 9 The Passion and Resurrection
- 10 Pentecost to Judgement
- Conclusion: survival and revival
- Appendix: the liturgical context of the plays
- Notes
- Bibliographical index of plays
- Performance records and references
- General bibliography
- Index
4 - Creation and Fall
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Map 1 Medieval Europe showing locations of principal play-texts and records cited in this study
- Map 2 Enlargement of central area showing locations of liturgical and feast-day plays as defined in chapter 1
- Map 3 Enlargement of central area showing locations of civic and community plays as defined in chapter 2
- Introduction: Christian Europe and the Play of God
- PART ONE THE THEATRICAL COMMUNITY
- PART TWO THE THEATRICAL TEXT
- 4 Creation and Fall
- 5 The Covenant and the Kingdom
- 6 Prophets and precursors of Redemption
- 7 The Birth and childhood of Jesus
- 8 The public life of Jesus
- 9 The Passion and Resurrection
- 10 Pentecost to Judgement
- Conclusion: survival and revival
- Appendix: the liturgical context of the plays
- Notes
- Bibliographical index of plays
- Performance records and references
- General bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God … all things were made by him.
(John 1: 1, 3)In the following analysis I have tried to mention at least in passing all the medieval plays on Old Testament subjects that have been published or listed in bibliographies. The inevitable omissions are unintentional. The texts and details mentioned specifically are of two main kinds: those that are common to a number of plays from different language groups and those peculiar to one play for which a source may or may not be available. Extra material is given from the less easily accessible texts – the two unpublished Valenciennes plays in French, for example, or the Dutch rhetoricians' plays. The existence of the widely available, detailed analysis of the English cycles by Rosemary Woolf has allowed me to treat these well-known plays less fully.
Some plays in both Latin and vernacular contain only material from the Old Testament, usually a single episode or related group. More commonly a sequence of Old Testament episodes or at least a scene of the Fall of Man is found at the beginning of cyclic Corpus Christi or passion plays, for, as Gréban puts it in the prologue to his Passion, ‘La creacion du monde est la chose sur quoy depend tout ce qui vient apres’ (the creation of the world is the event on which depends all that happened after: 13).
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- Information
- The Biblical Drama of Medieval Europe , pp. 65 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995