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

✍ Scribed by Christina M. Fitzgerald

• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 229
• Edition: First Edition
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 16
1 Men in the Household, Guild, and City......Page 28
2 The Domestic Scene: Patriarchal Fantasies and Anxieties in the Family and Guild......Page 56
3 Male Homosocial Communities and Public Life......Page 110
4 Acting Like a Man: The Solitary Christ and Masculinity......Page 160
Notes......Page 180
Works Cited......Page 206
B......Page 216
C......Page 217
G......Page 220
K......Page 221
M......Page 222
R......Page 224
V......Page 225
Y......Page 226