French visual culture and the making of medieval theater / Laura Weigert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weigert, Laura, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater in art.

Art and society--France--History--To 1500.

Art and society--France--History--16th century.

Theater and society--France--History--To 1500.

Theater and society--France--History--16th century.

Performing arts--Social aspects--France--History--To 1500.

Performing arts--Social aspects--France--History--16th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xx, 290 pages digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

French Visual Culture & the Making of Medieval Theater

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Summary:

This book revives what was unique, strange and exciting about the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes. Laura Weigert brings together a wealth of visual artifacts and practices to explore this tradition of late medieval performance located not in 'theaters' but in churches, courts, and city streets and squares. By stressing the theatricality rather than the realism of fifteenth-century visual culture and the spectacular rather than the devotional nature of its effects, she offers a new way of thinking about late medieval representation and spectatorship. She shows how images that ostensibly document medieval performance instead revise its characteristic features to conform to a playgoing experience that was associated with classical antiquity. This retrospective vision of the late medieval performance tradition contributed to its demise in sixteenth-century France and promoted assumptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the contemporary disciplines of art and theater history.

Contents:

Introduction: From Theatricality to Theater

"Vocamus Personagias": The Figures of Ephemeral Stagings

"Ouvrez vos yeux et regardez": Illuminated Passion Plays and the Commemoration of Performance

"Faire Semblant": Make Believe and the Experience of Heroic Battles

"Cy s'ensuit le Mystère": Creating a Spectator and a Reader of Plays

"C'était qu'un jeu industrieux": Artifice and Authenticity in the Devil's Play

Conclusion: Mysterious Ends 1548-1577.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 01 Jan 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-41101-X

1-316-41295-4

1-316-41315-2

1-139-62902-6

1-316-41333-0

1-316-41423-X

1-316-41351-9