Death By Drama
J Enders
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Part of every legend is true. Or so argues Jody Enders in this fascinating
look at early French drama and the way it compels us to consider where
the
stage ends and where real life begins. This ambitious and bracing study
explores fourteen tales of the theater that are at turns dark and dangerous,
sexy and scandalous, humorous and frightening-stories that are nurtured
by the confusion between truth and fiction, and imitation and enactment,
until it becomes impossible to tell whether life is imitating art, or
art is imitating life.
Was a convicted criminal executed on stage during a beheading scene?
Was an unfortunate actor driven insane while playing a madman?
Did a theatrical enactment of a crucifixion result in a real one?
Did an androgynous young man seduce a priest when portraying a female
saint?
Enders answers these and other questions while presenting a treasure trove
of tales that have long seemed true but are actually medieval urban legends.
On topics ranging through politics, religion, marriage, class, and law,
these tales, Enders argues, do the cultural work of all urban legends:
they disclose the hopes, fears, and anxieties of their tellers. Each one
represents a medieval meditation created or dramatized by the theater
with its power to blur the line between fiction and reality, engaging
anyone who watches, performs, or is represented by it. Each one also raises
pressing questions about the medieval and modern world on the eve of the
Reformation, when Europe had never engaged more anxiously and fervently
in the great debate about what was real, what was pretend, and what was
pretense.
Written with elegance and flair, and meticulously researched, Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends will interest scholars of medieval and Renaissance literature, history, theater, performance studies, and anyone curious about urban legends.
Death by Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends
by J Enders
For more information: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
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