Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo): a dramaturgical analysis, historical commentary, and Latin edition with a new English verse translation / Kyle A. Thomas and Carol Symes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thomas, Kyle A., author.

Symes, Carol, author.

Series:

Early Drama, Art, and Music

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antichrist--Drama.

Antichrist.

Christian drama, Latin (Medieval and modern)--Translations into English.

Christian drama, Latin (Medieval and modern).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (174 p.) ill

Place of Publication:

Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2023.

Summary:

The Play about the Antichrist (Ludus de Antichristo) was composed around 1160 at the imperial Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee, at a critical point in the power-struggle between the papacy and Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. This new translation and commentary reveals this drama to be strikingly representative of the role that theatrical performance played in shaping contemporary politics, diplomacy, and public opinion. It also shows how drama functioned as an integral component of the educational curricula of elite monastic institutions like Tegernsee, where political administrators and diplomats were trained, and how performance served as a common, connective lingua franca among monasteries in twelfth-century Bavaria. In this new translation, Carol Symes provides the first full and faithful rendering of the play's dynamic language, maintaining the meter, rhyme scheme, and stage directions of the Latin original and restoring the liturgical elements embedded in the text. Kyle A. Thomas, whose fully-staged production tested the theatricality of this translation, provides a new historical and dramaturgical analysis of the play's rich interpretive and performative possibilities.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Kyle A. Thomas

Acknowledgments / Carol Symes and Kyle A. Thomas

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations

Part I: The Play: Historical, Literary, and Performance Contexts / Kyle A. Thomas

Introduction

A Performance Dramaturgy

History, Eschatology, and Education: Contextual Frameworks for The Play about the Antichrist

Liturgies, Æsthetics, and Symbolic Meaning-Making

Part II: A New Translation and Edition / Kyle A. Thomas and Carol Symes

Dramatis Personæ

Ludus de Antichristo / Kyle A. Thomas

The Play about the Antichrist / Carol Symes

Bibliography

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages) and index.

ISBN:

9781501513411

1-5015-1341-9