The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture (New Middle Ages) [Hardcover]

Christina M. Fitzgerald (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 140397277X | ISBN-13: 978-1403972774 | Publication Date: June 26, 2007 | Edition: First Edition

This book provides a needed new interpretation of the complex cultural meanings of the late medieval, guild-produced, biblical plays of York and Chester, England, commonly known as mystery plays. It argues that the plays are themselves a "drama of masculinity," that is, dramatic activity specifically and self-consciously concerned with the fantasies and anxieties of being male in the urban, mercantile worlds of their performance. It further contends that the plays in their historical performance contexts produced and reinforced masculine communities defined by occupation, thus visibly naturalizing the world of work as masculine. The book offers welcome insight into a significant, canonical genre of dramatic literature that has been studied previously in devotional and civic contexts, but not yet in its role in the cultural history of masculinity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Fitzgerald has written a lively and provocative book on a neglected topic: the relationship of late medieval biblical dramas from York and Chester to the urban guild culture that produced them. In a series of deft textual readings, she argues for guild culture's centrality to the ideology, imagery, and idiom of these plays. This book convincingly establishes how--as text and performance--the biblical plays of late medieval York and Chester simultaneously represented and negotiated conflicts and tensions generated within urban communities intensely divided by age, status, and especially gender. The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture will prove rewarding reading for anyone interested in the social and cultural contexts of early English drama."--Theresa Coletti, University of Maryland
 
“By adding sex/gender to the mix, Fitzgerald's study radically transforms our understanding of the northern mystery cycles of Chester and York. Fitzgerald demonstrates that the plays, filled with conflicting fantasies of civic masculinity, are more than passively-received exercises in lay spirituality: they instead express the simultaneously hopeful and anxious desires of English guildsmen looking for secure identities in the chaotic environment of late medieval civic oligarchy. Especially welcome is her concluding chapter on the cycles' presentation of a masculinist Christ, a much-needed complication of previous attempts to read the plays in the light of female-centered affective piety.”--Robert W. Barrett, Jr., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

"[This book] is a compelling intervention in contemporary drama criticism . . . it provides detailed close readings of a dazzling number of individual plays (over thirteen plays each in chapters 2 and 3) . . . The Drama of Masculinity makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between guild culture and late-medieval drama, challenging the conventional vision of the drama as evnidence of the power and prestige of urban guilds by emphasizing the extent to which the dramas of York and Chester embody the demands of civic government on the guildsmen."--Speculum

About the Author

Christina M. Fitzgerald is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toledo in Ohio. She has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Recent articles have been published in the journal Exemplaria and in the essay collection Varieties of Devotion in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 228 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (June 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140397277X
• ISBN-13: 978-1403972774
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,019,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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