The Medieval Theater of Cruelty
J Enders
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Why did medieval dramatists weave so many scenes of torture into their
plays? Exploring the cultural connections among rhetoric, law, drama,
literary creation, and violence, Jody Enders addresses an issue that has
long troubled students of the Middle Ages. Theories of rhetoric and law
of the time reveal, she points out, that the ideology of torture was a
widely accepted means for exploiting such essential elements of the stage
and stagecraft as dramatic verisimilitude, pity, fear, and catharsis to
fabricate truth.
Analyzing the consequences of torture for the history of aesthetics in
general and of drama in particular, Enders shows that if the violence
embedded in the history of rhetoric is acknowledged, we are better able
to understand not only the enduring "theater of cruelty" identified
by theorists from Isidore of Seville to Antonin Artaud, but also the continuing
modern devotion to the spectacle of pain.
"The Medieval Theater of Cruelty" by J Enders
For more information: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
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