Date of Award
Spring 2025
Language
English
Embargo Period
4-30-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School/Department
Department of English
Program
English
First Advisor
Helene Scheck
Committee Members
Martha Rozett, Rachel Dressler
Keywords
medieval drama, social space, visual arts, performance, ritual, Corpus Christi
Abstract
This project makes use of spatial theory to more fully understand the performative possibilities of the celebrated York cycle within its spatial, historical, political, and cultural contexts, and in conversation with visual arts and ritual practices performed around and within medieval York. Though play cycles were not uncommon in late medieval England, York produced a unique series, encompassing biblical events from creation to judgment, which was performed annually on pageant wagons that traveled annually through the city streets with performances at several set stations. The text of the plays was registered with the City government, or Corporation, who required all gild members to participate in and financially support this extraordinary production. As a whole, the plays presented an image of a unified society, yet through the text and its interaction with performance spaces in the city we can see that the homogeneity presented in the image was as staged as the play performances themselves. As we will see, the plays of York juxtaposed, physically and religiously, the biblical world and the historical, political, and social elements of city residents’ contemporary world. In their performance, moreover, they interacted with static elements of material culture, like visual arts and city buildings, and with vital aspects, such as ritual practices. Events in the society layered meaning onto spaces of the city, allowing meaning-making to shift from one year’s performance to the next.
While this project is necessarily conjectural, there is enough documentary and material evidence to entertain possible contemporary meanings audiences could have brought to bear on performances of these plays. I have selected three plays from the passion sequence of the York cycle to demonstrate how audiences may have made meaning from different performance scenarios by bringing contemporary information with them as they mentally and emotionally brought together images available to them through visual arts, religious and political ritual, and the performances themselves. Specifically, I draw attention to the agency audiences claimed through this process and argue that this agency and meaning-making gives power to the audiences beyond the control of civic or ecclesiastic authorities, potentially creating “uncooperative signs” throughout both the performances and the city itself that undermine messages structured and presented by the wealthy and powerful of the city.
License
This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.
Recommended Citation
Williams, Karen Suzanne, "Christ at the Gates of the Minster: Drama and Civic Space in Later Medieval York" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 189.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/189
