Fall 1999 Issue

Digital Resources
Dissertations
MLA 1999—MRDS Sessions
      Other Sessions of Interest
      MRDS Calendar of Events
Kalamazoo 1999—MRDS Session Review
MRDS Book Awards Announcement
MRDS Business
Performances
President's Note
Puzzler
Recent Publications
SITM News
Upcoming Academic Meetings and Opportunities
Website Review

MLA 1999—Chicago

Session 13 (MRDS)
Carnival and Popular Culture: From Early Europe to the Contemporary Caribbean
Monday, 27 December, 1:45-3:00 p.m.
Missouri, Sheraton

"Masquerade Dreams"
Helene Bellour, Paris, France; Jeffrey Chock, Port of Spain, Trinidad

"Time Off for Bad Behavior: Social Satire versus Anarchic Fantasy in Carnival Masks, Medieval and Modern"
Martin Walsh, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

"Cuban Carnival and the 'Special Period.'"
Judith Bettelheim, Emory Univ.

Respondents: Pamela Franco, University of Illinois at Chicago; Samuel Kinser, Northern Illinois Univ.

Note from the Organizer
The MRDS has organized a session on Carnival that links the study of modern festivals with those of history. It will feature a slide/calypso presentation of contemporary Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, followed by papers presented by Samuel Kinser and MRDS member Martin Walsh that link such carnivals with festivals of the past. Internationally known art historian Judith Bettelheim will focus on Carnival in contemporary Cuba, where it was recently reinstated. Pamela Franco will focus on gender issues and other related questions in contemporary West Indian Festivals.

This important session, which has required financial subsidies provided by Trinity College, Hartford, CT, and which assembles materials from various traditions, has been placed in the conference IN THE ADDED FIRST HALF DAY, December 27, at 1:45 pm, and it will be held in the hotel designated for foreign language papers rather than in the hotel assigned to English language presentations.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT.

Please plan to attend! Tell your friends about this session! Come early! Be there! Spread the word!

Session 173 (MRDS)
The Representation of Jews on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage: A Roundtable
Tuesday, 28 December, 8:30-9:45 a.m.
Huron, Sheraton

"The Comic Abject Object: Jews in Medieval Drama"
Sylvia Tomasch, Hunter Coll., City Univ. of New York

"Comedy, Conversion, and Jewish Absence in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice"
Lisa R. Lampert, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

"Barabas, Shylock, and Company: Mediterranean Commerce and Jewish Merchants in the Drama of Early Modern England"
Daniel James Vitkus, Florida Inst. of Tech.

"Strange Behavior: Cultural Expectation and the Jewish Irruption"
Lloyd Edward Kermode, Ithaca Coll.

"Edged Out of Exile: At What Price Jewish Dignity?"
Yvette M. Smith, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

"Celestina, Contamination, and the Performance of Jewishness"
Gregory S. Hutcheson, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago

Note from the Organizer
The goal of the roundtable is to bring together the broadest possible spectrum of current work on this topic in both the medieval and early modern periods. Sylvia Tomasch explores the portrayal of Jews through comic means as abject objects, that is, as constructions fashioned to focus and combat Christian doubt by providing a visible locus of subjugated otherness. Her analysis focuses on two characters: Archisynagogus, of the twelfth-century Benediktbeuern Christmas play; and Abraham, in the fourteenth-century Czech Mastrikar. Daniel Vitkus analyzes the representation of two other characters against the contemporary historical record. Lloyd Kermode investigates the complex of gender, religion, and race as types of "otherness" in the women in The Merchant of Venice. Yvette-Marie Smith studies the highly ambivalent representation of "virtuous" Jews in the Biblical Drama of France. Gregory Hutcheson proposes an analysis of the protagonist of Fernando de Rojas's Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499), in which this figure of the "alcahueta" functions as the veteran polluter of notions of caste, orthodoxy, normativity (both cultural and sexual), the literary word, and language itself. It is hoped that, after the five speakers have outlined their positions, there will be ample time for audience response and discussion.

MRDS HAPPY HOUR

On the evening of December 28
Share drinks in Milla Riggio's room in the Hyatt Regency

6:00 P.M. to DINNERTIME.
All Welcome.
Bring your Friends.

MLA—Other Sessions of Interest

Session 23
Marlowe and the Early Modern Economy
Monday, 27 December, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Burnham, Hyatt Regency

"Tributary Economies: Captivity, Slavery, and Commodity in The Jew of Malta"
Daniel James Vitkus, Florida Inst. of Tech.

"'I Know She Is a Courtesan by Her Attire': Clothing and Identity in The Jew of Malta"
Randall Shige Nakayama, San Francisco State Univ.

"A Debt to the Devil: Faustus and the Fate of Prodigality in Elizabethan London"
Nicholas R. Moschovakis, Univ. of the South

Session 68
Cervantes's Theater and Theatricality in Cervantes
Monday, 27 December, 5:15-6:30 p.m.
Parlor C, Sheraton

"Cervantes's Algerian Plays: Toward Freedom from Performance"
Kenneth A. Stackhouse, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.

"Cervantes's Critique of Verisimilitude as Intertext for the 'New Comedy'"
Vincent Martin, Utah State Univ.

"The Arrows of Love and War: Unnatural Women, Gender, and Homosexuality in La casa de los celos"
Iluminada Amat, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Session 124
Contaminating Bodies: Dramas of Disease in Early Modern England
Monday, 27 December, 9:00-10:15 p.m.
Skyway Suite 273, Hyatt Regency

"The Infections of Henry IV, Part I"
Matthew A. Greenfield, Bowdoin Coll.

"'The Enterprise Is Sick': Pathologies of Value in Troilus and Cressida"
Jonathan Gil Harris, Ithaca Coll.

"John Webster's Unnatural and Horrid Physic"
Tanya L. Pollard

Session 247
Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England
Tuesday, 28 December, 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.
Horner, Hyatt Regency

"Common Theater and Noble Patrons"
Leeds Barroll, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County

"Theatrical Patronage: Functions, Frictions, and Change in Early Modern England"
Paul Whitfield White, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette

"'What Revels Are in Hand?': Marriage Celebrations and Patronage of the Arts in Renaissance England"
David M. Bevington, Univ. of Chicago; Milla Cozart Riggio, Trinity Coll., CT

Respondent: J. Duke Pesta

Session 305
Borders in Medieval Texts and Performance
Tuesday, 28 December, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Arkansas, Sheraton

"Cutoffs, Borders, Tropes: Manuscripts and the Queer World of Love and Ritual"
Anna Maria Roberts, Miami Univ., Oxford

"Eve's Borderline Innocence in the Anglo-Norman Jeu d'Adam"
Jane Marianna Tolmie, Oxford Univ.

"Crossing the Boundaries: Yvain and His Lion in Garrett 125"
Grace M. Armstrong, Bryn Mawr Coll.

Session 415
Marlowe and the Pagans
Tuesday, 28 December, 7:15-8:30 p.m.
Toronto, Hyatt Regency

"'To Affect Sweet Divinity': Metempsychosis, Metamorphosis, and Performance in Doctor Faustus"
Laura Severt King, Univ. of Vermont

"Marlowe's Catholicism: Papistry and Paganism in Hero and Leander"
Dympna Carmel Callaghan, Syracuse Univ.

"Marlowe's Graduates"
David R. Riggs, Stanford Univ.

Session 531
Women and the Theater Business, 1500-1700
Wednesday, 29 December, 12:00 noon-1:15 p.m.
Erie, Sheraton

"Isabella Andreini: A Woman at Play in the Intersection of the Commedia dell'Arte and the Commedia Erudita"
Julie D. Campbell, Eastern Illinois Univ.

"When the Men Are Away: Familial Collaboration and the Material Production of Theater"
Theresa D. Kemp, Univ. of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

"Tethys Takes Charge: Anne of Denmark as Theatrical Producer"
Melissa D. Aaron

"Succession: Political and Authorial Production in Aphra Behn's The Roundheads"
Kimberly Suzann Latta, Saint Louis Univ.

Session 603
Visual and Performance Sites in Colonial Spanish America
Wednesday, 29 December, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Erie, Sheraton

"Ephemeral Architectures and Performances: The Túmulo Imperial (1554) by Cervantes de Salazar"
Fernando Gómez, Stanford Univ.

"Micaela Bastidas: Public Spectacle and the Fragmentation of the Female Body in Eighteenth-Century Peru"
Mariselle Meléndez, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette

"Painting and the Epistemology of Piety in Arzán's Historia de la Villa Imperial de Potosí"
Ruth A. Hill, Univ. of Virginia

"La utopía del Chaco Austral en el pincel del misionero jesuita Florián Paucke"
Francisco Bustamante, Univ. of Florida

Session 637
Medieval Women and Performance in Community Drama(s)
Wednesday, 29 December, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
Arkansas, Sheraton

"Drama, Gender, and Community at Barking Abbey"
Lisa M. C. Weston, California State Univ., Fresno

"The Proscription of Women's Public Performance in Chester and the Performance of Female Resistance in the City's Cycle Drama"
Mary Elizabeth Sokolowski, State Univ. of New York, Binghamton

"Saintly Shrews: Loud Holiness in the English Marketplace Cycles"
Joseph M. Ricke, Huntington Coll.

"Mothers, Virgins, and Watkyn: Female Presence and Feminine Participation in the Digby 'Killing of the Children'"
Heather Lee Hill-Vasquez, Univ. of Dayton

MLA—MRDS Calendar of Events

Kalamazoo—MRDS Session Review

"Early Drama and the Celtic World": The Reviews Are In

Critics have called it "the most enjoyable MRDS session in years!" ; "...technically stunning…"; "...unbelievable!"

All in all, the MRDS session on "Early Drama and the Celtic World" at the 34th International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo was a resounding success. How could it fail with its mix of scholarly substance, lurid spectacle, and live prompting in full sight of the audience? Sarah Campbell, Boston University, who recently won the Medieval Academy's John Leyerle/CARA prize for her dissertation, opened the session. For anyone unfamiliar with early Welsh drama, her paper "'The Strong Man': Problems of Translation of a Medieval Welsh Morality Play" served as a succinct introduction not only to the little-known play, but to issues that translators of Celtic texts must confront on a regular basis. As one of few scholars working on early Welsh drama, Sarah spoke as a voice of authority on the subject.

Next, moving south from Wales to Cornwall, Phil Butterworth, University of Leeds, well known for his dramatic pyrotechnics, sparked debate with his examination of "Richard Carew's 'Ordinary'." In order to prove that Carew's "Ordinary" could have prompted actors in early Cornish plays from a position in full view of the audience, he showed video footage of visible prompting that occurs in some Spanish productions today. If that did not convince the skeptics, perhaps the actual prompting of a portion of the paper did. Standing just behind Phil, the session presider, in full view of the audience, successfully fed him an entire paragraph of text.

Following this never-before-seen-at-the-'Zoo feat, Max Harris, University of Wisconsin-Madison, brought us yet another first: live action footage of lurid spectacle featuring "ant-flingers," "men in diapers, and satirical (and very vulgar) floats satirizing the Pope's visit to Cuba." His paper "Ordered Chaos: Carnival in Southern Galicia" introduced elements of carnivalesque spectacle rarely seen outside Galicia, and perhaps there is a reason for that. The cringes from audience members as they watched thousands of angry red ants scattered among the carnival-goers suggests that this tradition will not be adopted by the MRDS for future winehour festivities. Max's paper did raise some intriguing questions, however, among them: How can we ascertain the true age of an "ancient tradition"? The PERFORM listserv has also been the venue for a continuing discussion of medieval references to the use of ants to drive away the Jews.

Rounding out the session, the presider stood in for an absent Alexandra Johnston, University of Toronto, to present "The York Cycle and the Cornish Ordinalia: A Study in Contrasts." While considering the dissimilarlity between these two British dramatic cycles, Sandy's commentary from a long-time director's point of view also suggested that the earliest extant Ordinalia manuscript (MS. Bodley 791) could well be a director's copy. Unfortunately for those in attendance, further insights on the manuscript must wait until Sandy has completed additional research. The session closed with a number of questions and comments, and despite doubts that 4 papers, 2 slide projectors, a VCR, an OHP, and live prompting could ever go smoothly, it finished on time with no technological glitches.

—Gloria J. Betcher
Session Organizer and Presider

SITM News

The Tenth Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l'étude du Théâtre Médiéval will take place in Groningen during summer 2001 (following the International Medieval Conference in Leeds).

The organizing committee includes Bart Ramakers (Free University, Amsterdam), Jelle Koopmans (University of Amsterdam), Martin Gosman, Rina Walthus, and Femke Kramer (University of Groningen).

Early next spring all SITM members will receive the first of the newsletters we intend to send out from now until 2001. The newsletter will give information about our plans, the time schedule (from now until 2001), the topics, contact addresses, and other relevant matters.

Dues of US$15 per year may be paid to the national representatives. A complete list of officers is available on the SITM web page: www.sdu.dk/hum/sitm

Recent Publications

Leslie Abend Callahan and Robert L. A. Clark, "Medieval French Drama." Literature of the French and Occitan Middle Ages: Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries. Ed. Deborah Sinnreich-Levi and Ian S. Lurie. Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1999. 307-20.

Robert L.A. Clark, "Eve and Her Audience in the Anglo-Norman Adam." Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Cultural and Individual Identity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Sally McKee. Turnhout: Brepols: 1999. 27-39.

Lawrence M. Clopper, "English Drama: From Ungodly Ludi to Sacred Play," Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 739-66.

Clifford Davidson and Peter Happé, eds., The Worlde and the Chylde. Kalamazoo: Medieval
Institute Publications, 1999.

Clifford Davidson, review of David Mills, Recycling the Cycle. Sixteenth Century Journal 30, no. 1 (1999): 300-02.

George Peele, King Edward the First with the Life of Lluellen Rebel in Wales (1593), with Insert (Samples) David and Bethsabe (1594). Edited by George Kelsey Dreher. Midland, Texas: Iron Horse Free Press, 1999.

13th-century history viewed from 16th-century drama.

Author George Peele was in the group of London playwrights, precursory to Shakespeare, known as the "university wits" which also included Marlowe, Nashe, Lyly, and Greene. In 1587 Thomas Greene could call him "The chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primum verborum artifex (most excellent artist of words)," and one who "goeth a step beyond all that write."

Editor George Kelsey Dreher provides a retroform of Peele's King Edward I, solving several riddles in the text that he discusses in the 43-page introduction covering Chronicle History Plays, Sources, Structure, Theme, Characterization, and Diction. With insert David and Bethsabe (sample), Dreher juxtaposes Peele's verse with parallel Bible passages in the 1525 translation by Miles Coverdale, demonstrating that Peele worked directly from the Latin and used as sources the Psalms as well as Samuel II.

Alan Hindley, "The sermon and the late Medieval French moralities," Le Moyen Français 42 (1998): 71-85.

Michael O'Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Victor I. Scherb, "Blasphemy and the Grotesque in the Digby Mary Magdalene," Studies in Philology 96 (1999): 223-240.

Stephen Wright, "Religious Drama, Civic Ritual, and the Police: The Semiotics of Public Safety in Late Medieval Germany," Theatre Annual: A Journal of Performance Studies, 51 (1998): 1-14.

Stephen Wright, "Joseph as Mother, Jutta as Pope: Gender and Transgression in Medieval German Drama," Theatre Journal, 51 (1999): 146-66.

Early Drama, Art, and Music Review
Fall 1999 (vol. 22, no. 1)

EDELGARD DUBRUCK
"Aesop's Weeping Puppy: Late Medieval Migrations of a Narrative Motif"

CLIFFORD DAVIDSON, comp.
"Saint Plays and Pageants of Medieval Britain" [updated list, also available on the EDAM web site]

BARBARA D. PALMER
Review of Milla Riggio, ed., The Play of Wisdom

JOHN J. McGAVIN
Review of David Mills, Recycling the Cycle

RALPH BLASTING
Review of Larry E. West, trans., The Alsfeld Passion Play

MANUEL JOSE GOMEZ LARA
Review of Susan Verdi Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain

Early Theatre
1999 (vol. 2)

Abstracts of all articles are included on the Early Theatre website:
www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~reed/early/crrntmn.htm

LESLIE THOMSON
"The Meaning of Thunder and Lightning: Stage Directions and Audience Response"

LISA HOPKINS
"Play Houses: Drama at Bolsover and Welbeck"

SALLY-BETH MACLEAN
"Saints on Stage: An Analytical Survey of Dramatic Records in the West of England"

STEPHEN K. WRIGHT and JAMES STOKES
"The Donington Cast List: Innovation and Tradition in Parish Guild Drama in Early Elizabethan Lincolnshire"

LAWRENCE M. CLOPPER, CLIFFORD DAVIDSON, and ELIZABETH BALDWIN
"Saints Plays" (Review Article)

The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Winter 1999 (vol. 29, no. 1)

GAIL McMURRAY GIBSON
"Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval Childbirth"

THERESA COLETTI
"Genealogy, Sexuality, and Sacred Power: The Saint Anne Dedication of the Digby Candlemas Day and the Killing of the Children of Israel"

ROBERT L. A. CLARK and CLAIRE SPONSLER
"Othered Bodies: Racial Crossdressing in the Mistere de la Sainte Hostie and the Croxton Play of the Sacrament"

RICHARD K. EMMERSON
"Contextualizing Performance: The Reception of the Chester Antichrist"

PAUL WHITFIELD WHITE
"Reforming Mysteries' End: A New Look at Protestant Intervention in English Provincial Drama"

MICHAEL O'CONNELL
"Vital Cultural Practices: Shakespeare and the Mysteries"

PETER WOMACK
"Shakespeare and the Sea of Stories"

Medieval English Theatre
Vol. 19, 1997 (1999)

GORDON KIPLING
"Theatre as Subject and Object in Fouquet's Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia"

GRAHAM A. RUNNALLS
"Jean Fouquet's 'Martyrdom of St Apollonia' and the Medieval French Stage"

GORDON KIPLING
"Fouquet, St Apollonia, and the Motives of the Miniaturist's Art: A Reply to Graham Runnalls"

Medieval Drama Translation Series

Medieval Dutch Drama: Four Secular Plays and Four Farces from the Van Hulthem Manuscript, translated with an Introduction by Johanna C. Prins (1998). ISBN 1-889818-07-0. ca. 200 pages. $10.95.

The Van Hulthem Manuscript (ca. 1400-1410) contains four so-called "abel plays": Esmoreit, Gloriant, Lancelot of Denmark, and The Debate of Winter and Summer, along with the farces accompanying them in performance: Lippen, Blow-in-the-Box, The Witch, and Ruben. Among the earliest known secular dramas in any vernacular language, these plays offer a unique glimpse of late medieval theatre on the Continent. Prins's introduction describes the manuscript, the language, style, and structure of the plays, and places their performance history in socio-historical context. Helpful explanatory notes and a full bibliography facilitate students' use.

"These plays . . . ought to have been brought to the attention of the scholarly world much earlier, and it is high time they become available to all who love the Middle Ages, all who love drama, all who love life." —Peter Beidler, Lehigh University

MILLA RIGGIO'S NEW BOOK

"Teaching Shakespeare through Performance," an MLA volume that features essays by many folks you know and some you don't, will be launched at the MLA this December. It's pretty; it's useful. Look for it!

Upcoming Academic Meetings and Opportunities

Teaching, Learning, and Using Latin in the Middle Ages: A Conference in Honor of A.G. Rigg

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: December 15, 1999

University of Toronto
March 24-25, 2000

In this century, the field of European medieval studies has seen kaleidoscopic shifts in focus. But virtually all students and scholars have necessarily acknowledged the centrality of Latin as the principal vehicle of the period's high culture, and as the medium of the vast majority of its written remains. Regardless of their scholarly allegiances, most medievalists either address directly, or must face implicitly, the questions raised by Latin's status during the period.

How was Latin taught and learned? How widely was it known, written, and read? How did it develop and how did it interact with the vernacular languages that surrounded it? How did it resist or enable cultural innovation? Finally, what roles has the teaching of medieval Latin language and literature played in the development of medieval studies in this century?

Such questions have occupied the career of one of medieval Latin studies' preeminent proponents and practitioners, A.G. Rigg, who for some three decades has taught medieval Latin at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. In a two-day conference planned in his honor, we will address the teaching and learning of medieval Latin, and the range of uses to which the language was put. The conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, March 24-25, 2000. We invite abstracts of 250-500 words for 20-minute papers on all related topics. Please address abstracts by December 15, 1999 to
David Townsend and Matthew Ponesse
Co-chairs of the conference committee
Centre for Medieval Studies
39 Queen's Park Crescent East
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2C3
Canada
or e-mail them to townsend@chass.utoronto.ca.

Teaching the Middle Ages Across the Curriculum

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: February 1, 2000

Center for Medieval Studies
Pennsylvania State University

Send abstracts of papers to
Vickie Ziegler
S. 409 Burrowes Bldg.
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802

Collection on the Representation of Jews on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadlines: Abstracts: February 1, 2000
Accepted articles: July 15, 2000
(earlier submissions encouraged)

Call for contributions for a collection examining the representations of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness on the medieval and early modern stage.

For further information, or to submit proposals or complete articles, contact
Mark Addison Amos
Department of English
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, Illinois 62901-4503
(618) 453-6838 Fax: (618) 549-3937
Email: maamos@siu.edu

Thirty-Second Annual RMMRA Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: March 1, 2000

Salt Lake City, Utah
May 11-14, 2000

The conference of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association will take place at the Snowbird Resort outside Salt Lake City. It is being organized by Phebe Jensen, of Utah State University, Isabel Moreira, of the University of Utah; local arrangements are being handled by Michael Walton. The conference will be sponsored by Utah State University, the University of Utah and other Utah institutions. The theme of the RMMRA 2000 conference is "Millennium: Much Ado About Nothing?"

Papers and proposals on or related to the conference theme and in the fields of medieval and Renaissance literature, history, art, music, religion, or interdisciplinary studies are welcomed. The deadline date for individual and panel submissions is March 1, 2000.

Please send abstracts and proposals to either one of the conference organizers:
Phebe Jensen
Utah State University
Logan, UT 84322
pjensen@english.usu.edu
or
Isabel Moreira
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112
Isabel.Moreira@m.cc.utah.edu

Seventeenth Barnard College Medieval and Renaissance Conference

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Deadline: May 1, 2000

New York City
December 2, 2000

This conference will explore the meaning and impact of public performance, ritual, and display from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.

For more information, contact
Laurie Postlewate
Dept. of French
Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
lpostlew@barnard.edu

NEMLA

CALL FOR PAPERS

Buffalo
April 7-8, 2000

Session sponsored by the International Courtly Literature Society: "Literature and Trickery: Modalities of Deceit in Courtly Contexts"

In light of the tremendous attention being paid of late to the figure of the "trickster" in world literatures (for example, the recent book by Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes This World), this session proposes to cast an inquiring glance at the history of this figure in medieval European literatures. Taking his initial stimulus from Hermes, the ultimate boundary crosser, this archetypal figure develops many faces over the course of his history in medieval Europe: for example, Renart or Till Eulenspiegel, to name but two of the most prominent examples. However, there is also a broader pattern of trickery and deception in the context of courtly and extra-courtly literature: linguistic deceit, physical mischief, and thematics of hypocrisy are recurrent modalities in many literatures of the European Middle Ages.

This session will center around the diverse manifestations of the trickster in medieval literature: the deceiver, the fast talker, the thief, the marginal or transgressive figure of any type. These themes could conceivably be expanded into papers focused on such characters as the fool, or, alternately, the vagabond—who, eventually, in time, becomes the picaro.

Any figure who survives through ruse, who lives by his or her wits—whether for purely personal, amoral gain or for more altruistic purposes—is the intended focus of this session.

Please contact
Kathleen Loysen
Department of French
New York University
19 University Place
New York, NY 10003
kql2807@is.nyu.edu

Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

CALL FOR ARTICLES

Parergon: Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies welcomes articles of high quality. Articles may be on any aspect of medieval and early modern literature, history, and culture. Submissions should be sent to the editor:
Christopher Wortham
Department of English
University of Western Australia
Nedlands WA 6907
Australia
Maximum length: 8000 words.
Submissions should be accompanied by a 3.5" floppy disk for PC or Mac (MS Word 5.1 preferred). Offers to review books should be sent to the Book Review Editor, Andrew Lynch (enclose c.v.).

Early Modern Literary Studies

CALL FOR REVIEWS

Early Modern Literary Studies is pleased to announce that, in addition to its well-established book review section, it will be starting to carry reviews of theatre productions, and from time to time of appropriate films.

If you would be interested in offering a review, please contact the Drama Review Editor, Chet Scoville, at scoville@chass.utoronto.ca.

ANZAMEMS 2000
"Constructing Identity: Republics, Nations and Cultures"

University of Sydney
February 1-4, 2000

For more information, contact
Nerida Newbigin
Dept. of Italian, A26
University of Sydney
NSW 2006
Australia
+61 2 9351 3584 Fax: +61 2 9351 3407
nerida.newbigin@italian.usyd.edu.au
Website: www.arts.usyd.edu.au/arts/departs/medieval/anzamems

Sixth Annual ACMRS Interdisciplinary Conference

"Fear and Its Representations in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance"

Tempe, Arizona
February 17-19, 2000

The plenary speaker for this year's conference will be R. I. Moore (University of Newcastle), author of The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (1987) and The Origins of European Dissent (1977).

Contact:
Robert E. Bjork
Directory, ACMRS
Arizona State University
Box 872301
Tempe, AZ 85287-2301
(602) 965-5900 Fax: (602) 965-1681
Website: http://www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs

Interdisciplinary Dance Conference

Ghent, Belgium
11-18 April 2000

For further information please contact
Barbara Ravelhofer
St John's College
GB-Cambridge CB2 1TP
br202@cus.cam.ac.uk
or
Lieven Baert
Scheldestr.109
B-9040 Gent
Belgium
be013485@oxygen.uunet.be
Website: http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/Public/ravel

Fourth International Congress on Fifteenth-Century Studies

Antwerp, Belgium
2-7 July 2000

Contact:
Edelgard DuBruck
110337.3107@compuserve.com
or
Peter de Wilde
dewilde@uia.ua.ac.be

Seminar on Medieval Theater

under the direction of Darwin Smith (CNRS)

Topic: editing and analysis of dramatic texts (13th-16th centuries)

Participants and projects: Marie Bouthaïk-Gironès (les clercs auteurs de textes dramatiques parisiens au XVe siècle); Robert Clark (Mystère de la sainte Hostie); Garance Giraud (Le Mystère de saint Louis de Pierre Gringore); Monique Goullet (la comédie latine); Xavier Leroux (Le Mystère de la Conception); Mario Longtin (Le Mystère de sainte Barbe en cinq journées); Gabriella Roussa and Isabelle Ragnard (Le Jeu de Robin et Marion); Idilko Seres (Le Mystère des Actes des Apôtres); Marcus Cruse (Le Mystère du Jour du Jugement); Darwin Smith (Maistre Pierre Pathelin).

Visitors are welcome. Please contact Darwin Smith at +33 1 44 87 92 16 or darwin@vjf.cnrs.fr.

International Medieval Congress 2000
University of Leeds
10-13 July 2000

"Drama and the Built Environment"

Leeds 2000 International Medieval Congress will include four sessions on the uses of urban spaces and properties in early drama. The papers focus on the theatrical exploitation of everything from "street furniture" and squares to stones and boundary markers, castles, and churchyards.

Presenters will include Rosalind C. Hays, Anthony J. Scrase, David M. Palliser, Alan Somerset, Sally-Beth MacLean, David Lloyd, Miriam Gill, James Stokes, Joanna Mary Mattingly, and Peter Fleming.

SITM Conference

Groningen, The Netherlands
July 2001

The Tenth Colloquium of the Société Internationale pour l'étude du Théâtre Médiéval will take place in Groningen during summer 2001 (following the International Medieval Conference in Leeds).

For more information, see the SITM web page at
www.sdu.dk/hum/sitm.

Puzzler

On the opposite side of an early fourteenth-century Assize Roll for Norfolk and Suffolk, we find the following passage:

I am dowty in dede,
I am worly in wede,
I am semly on stede,
No weleny to me wyl I kyppe

Who is speaking?

Answer to Spring 1999 Puzzler

The triumphal entry of Duke Borso into Reggio

"In 1453, when Duke Borso came to Reggio to receive the homage of the city, he was met at the gate by a great machine on which St. Prospero, the patron saint of the town, appeared to float shaded by a baldachin held by angels, while below him was a revolving disk with eight singing angels, two of whom received from the saint the scepter and keys of the city, which they then delivered to the Duke. Then a chariot drawn by concealed horses advanced, bearing an empty throne behind which stood a figure of Justice attended by a genius. At the corners of the chariot sat four gray-headed lawgivers surrounded by angels with banners; on each side rode standard-bearers in complete armor. It need hardly be added that the goddess and the genius did not suffer the Duke to pass by without an address. A second car, drawn it seems by a unicorn, bore a Charity with a burning torch; but amid all this they could not deny themselves the ancient spectacle of a car in the form of a ship, moved by men concealed inside it. The whole procession now advanced toward the Duke. In front of the church of San Pietro, a halt was again made. A St. Peter attended by two angels floated down in an aureole from the façade, placed a wreath of laurel on the head of the Duke, and then floated back to his former position. The clergy provided another allegory of a purely religious kind: Idolatry and Faith stood on two lofty pillars, and after Faith, represented by a beautiful girl, had uttered her welcome, the other column and the figure upon it fell to pieces. Then came a Caesar with seven beautiful women, who were presented to Borso as the Virtues, which he was exhorted to pursue. At last the cathedral was reached, but after the service the Duke was again seated outside on a lofty golden throne, and a second time received the homage of some of the masks already mentioned. To conclude all, three angels flew down from an adjacent building, and, amid songs of joy, delivered to him palm branches, as symbols of peace." Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (New York: The New American Library of World Literature, 1960): 293-94. See also note 4 in Robert Withington, English Pageantry: An Historical Outline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918): I: 148-49.

Digital Resources

MRDS On the Web
toisondor.byu.edu/mrds
Dynamic Newsletter Archive
There are now two different archives of past newsletters on the web. The static archive allows you to consult an individual issue from front to back. The new Dynamic Newsletter Archive allows you to search for a particular rubric across all the newsletters in the archive. This should make research into the previous issues a lot more precise. For example, to find every occurrence of the name "Bevington" under the rubrics of the MLA and the Kalamazoo conferences:

• Click on the checkboxes next to "Kalamazoo Sessions" and "MLA Sessions"
• Click the "Submit Query" button
• A new page will load that includes all of the Kalamazoo and MLA sessions listed in previous newsletters
• After the new page has loaded, use your browser's Find tool (usually under "Edit") to look for "Bevington"

The archives currently include issues back to Spring 1995. More back issues will be added in the near future. (We are missing the Fall 1996 issue. If anyone owns a copy, please contact Jesse Hurlbut.)

York Cycle at Toronto 1998
arts-sciences.cua.edu/engl/toronto/york98.htm
Stephen Wright has created a website devoted to the performance of the complete York Cycle in Toronto in June of 1998. At present, the site consists of more than 100 photos of all but three of the pageants, links to the texts of all 47 plays, maps, links to other relevant websites, etc. The site will continue to expand as more materials become available.

REED Theatre Resource Page
www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/stage.html
Watch for a review of this very rich site in a future issue of your newsletter.

REED Patron's Database
www.utoronto.ca/patrons
Samples of REED's patrons database for the web can now be viewed online. More material on surviving performance locations and modern maps of entertainers' itineraries, etc. will be added in the coming months.

Le Théâtre Médiéval (l'Université de Haute-Bretagne, Rennes)
www.uhb.fr/alc/medieval
This site includes the complete edition of a handful of French medieval plays. Back issues of Graham Runnalls' Circulaire des mystérophiles are also available here.

N-Town Modernizations
www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ajohnsto
Modernized-spelling texts of N-Town (pageants, passions, plays about the Virgin Mary, and appendixes) have now joined the Castle of Perseverance on the World Wide Web. These modernizations were prepared by Professors Alexandra Johnston and Stanley Kahrl and are copyright by Alexandra F. Johnston 1999.

Do you have a site you'd like to see listed on the Digital Resources page? Send the URL to Jesse Hurlbut (jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu).

Website Review

ORB: The Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies
orb.rhodes.edu, December 1999

Every medievalist should know about this site. In addition to collecting numerous valuable links to other high-quality sites on medieval topics, ORB is very rich in content. The site introduces itself as "a cooperative effort on the part of scholars across the internet to establish an online textbook source for medieval studies on the World-Wide Web." ORB was established in May 1995 and maintains an open call for articles to be added to the site. Dual peer evaluation and editorial review of all submissions help maintain the kind of high quality expected from academic journals. To date, the site includes materials from fifty-two contributors. It is worth returning to ORB periodically to see what new documents have been added. The "What's New on ORB" page was last updated on December 1, 1999 and includes a list of over twenty new or updated items.

From the ORB home page, there are links to the six main content areas of the site. These include an encyclopedia, a textbook library, a reference shelf, resources for teaching, links to external sites and materials for the non-specialist. Each category leads to an impressive array of documents and materials. There is a great deal of cross-linking between the various areas of the site, so that a given web page may actually be listed in different places in the site hierarchy. The result is that navigation through the site may be somewhat disorienting. It would be helpful if there were a complete site directory so that the visitor could quickly relocate a particular item without having to retrace their fortuitous meanderings through various links. A search tool for ORB is currently out of service, but some help may be found by following the link to searches on Argos argos.evansville.edu (another great site for medievalists).

ORB offers far too little in the area of medieval drama. Nevertheless, there are links to the complete online texts of Everyman and the complete Towneley and York cycle plays at Virginia's Electronic Text Center as well as the illuminations of the French Jour dou Jugement play at DScriptorium. Unfortunately, some of these links are broken and need to be updated. In spite of these deficiencies, many of the materials that are currently available on ORB are very useful for either studying or teaching early drama. Various historical topics receive substantial treatment, and there is a nice set of documents regarding religious orders. I also found the resources on hagiography particularly interesting (look in the Encyclopedia under the rubric Religion). If, for example, you've ever found yourself wondering which saints' feasts are celebrated on a given day, the On-line Calendar of Saints' Days is invaluable (although it would also be useful if the same tool could conduct searches by saints' names to find their feast days).

In the final analysis, ORB offers a mix of its own high-quality material and many hundreds of links to other important sites for students and teachers of the Middle Ages. For anyone interested in developing a carefully controlled site on medieval drama that will receive a great deal of exposure, this may be the right venue.

—Jesse D. Hurlbut

Performances

French Farce in Action troupe

The director of the troupe is Donald Perret (Emerson College), and the other members are Mark Cruse (New York University), Simonetta Cochis (Transylvania University), Alan Knight (Emeritus—Pennsylvania State University), J. Milo Lanoue—Stage Manager (Atlanta Ballet Theater), Yvonne LeBlanc (North Broward Preparatory School), Nancy Regalado (New York University), and Evelyn Birge Vitz (New York University). The troupe has been invited to perform at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds and at a medieval fair which they sponsor in Ripon. The troupe will be performing in Ripon on July 8th and 9th, and at the Congress itself on July 12th. The performance program for the IMC includes La confession Margot, Farce nouvelle et fort joyeuse des femmes qui font escurer leurs chaulderons, Farce nouvelle tresbonne et fort joyeuse d'un chauldronnier, Farce nouvelle du paté et de la tarte.

Dissertations

Robert W. Barrett, Jr.
"Writing from the Marches: Cheshire Poetry and Drama, 1195-1645"
David Wallace, director
University of Pennsylvania, Department of English

Sarah B. Campbell
"The Strong Man and Its Contexts: An Edition, Translation, and Study of a Medieval Welsh Morality Play"
Stephen Wright, director
Catholic University of America

Marla Carlson
"Performative Pain: Building Culture on the Bodies of Actors, Artists, and Martyrs"
Medieval chapter titles:
"Impassive Bodies: Hrotsvit Stages Martyrdom"
"Using Saints: Pain as Spectacle in Late Medieval France"
Marvin Carlson, director
City University of New York Graduate School, Theatre Studies

Chuck Costello
"'For any Spirringes in þat Space': The Theatrical Game of the York Plays"
Alexandra Johnston, director
Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, University of Toronto

Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby
"Enacting the Diseased Spirit of Herod the Great on the Medieval English Stage"
Thomas J. Jambeck, director
University of Connecticut

Mark Cruse
"Theater of the Page: Reading and Performance in Fourteenth-Century France and Flanders"
Nancy F. Regalado, director
New York University, Department of French

James C. Cummings
"Contextual Studies of the Dramatic Records in the Area around The Wash, c. 1350-1500"
Peter Meredith, director
University of Leeds, School of English

Dr. Andrzej Dabrowka
"The Theatre and the Sacred in the Middle Ages. Religion, Civilization, Aesthetics"
(Habilitation)

Véronique Dominguez
"Le Corps dans les mystères de la Passion du XVe siècle: Discours théologique et ésthetique théâtrale"
Robert L.A. Clark, director
Kansas State University

Andrea R. Harbin
"Space and Movement on the Medieval English Religious Stage"
Stephen Wright, director
Catholic University of America

Douglas Hayes
"Rhetorical Subversion in the English Moral Interlude"
David N. Klausner, director
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

Sandra Pietrini
"The Iconography of Medieval Jesters"
(recently published on CD-ROM)
University of Florence (Italy), Department of History of Arts and Theatre

Jennifer Tormey
"La Diablerie: Regional Variation in French Mystery Plays (1400-1550)"
Alan E. Knight, director
Pennsylvania State University

MRDS Book Awards

Extended Deadline: January 15, 1999

MRDS is pleased to announce the creation of the David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies and the Martin Stevens Award for Best New Essay in Early Drama Studies. MRDS members in good standing may submit any book or essay published within 18 months of the deadline, which has been extended to January 15, 1999. The awards announcement and presentation will be held during the MRDS business meeting in May 2000 at Kalamazoo.

For more information, visit the MRDS website:
http://toisondor.byu.edu/mrds/awards.html

MRDS Business

Election of Officers

Nominations have been made for the following positions. Please vote on the enclosed ballot and return with your dues by January 31, 2000.

President:
Milla Riggio
John Coldewey

Vice President: Max Harris

Council Members:
Alan Knight
Véronique Plesch
Claire Sponsler

Secretary/Treasurer:
Gloria Betcher

Biographies of new candidates:

Max Harris
Max Harris is currently a member of the MRDS Council. He has participated widely in several MRDS sessions both as organizer and participant. His primary interest is the comparison of early drama records with modern folk festival practices, particularly regarding the celebration of Carnival.

Alan Knight
Research focus is late medieval French theatre. Publications include Aspects of Genre in Late Medieval French Drama (Manchester, 1983); Ed. The Stage as Mirror (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997) and several articles on the processional theatre of Lille. Current project is a critical edition: Les Mystères de la Procession de Lille (Vol. I near completion).

Véronique Plesch
Academic interests include French and Savoyard theater and iconography, late-medieval and Renaissance art history, monumental pictorial cycles. She has published on the staging of late medieval passion plays and on the relationship between medieval mural paintings and dramatic texts.

Claire Sponsler
Her research interests focus on late medieval culture, especially drama. Recent work includes: Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in Late Medieval England (Minnesota 1997); an edited collection of essays East of West: Crosscultural Performance and the Staging of Difference (forthcoming St Martin's 2000), and essays in the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, New Literary History, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, and Essays in Theatre, among others. She is currently at work on a book about the legacy of medieval drama in the US, from the sixteenth century up through the present.

Gloria Betcher
Her primary interests lie at the intersection of literature and culture. Her work is usually interdisciplinary and often involves archival research. Her main area of emphasis is Cornish culture and drama, especially the Ordinalia, but she is currently working on Lancastrian performance patronage in the reign of Henry IV. She contributed to the REED: Dorset/Cornwall collection, acting as a records researcher at the PRO.

AWARD

Congratulations to Sarah Campbell, a doctoral candidate at the Catholic University of America, who was awarded the first John Leyerle—CARA Prize for her editorial work on late-medieval Welsh drama. The prize allowed her to consult library materials at the University of Toronto under the direction of David Klausner.

President's Note

A Presidential Word About Elections And Other Stuff:

While I was away ("sunning myself"?) in the Caribbean last spring, John Coldewey did a fine job of filling in for me as President, not only at the MRDS meeting at Kalamazoo but throughout the semester. We have good new initiatives, prizes, and such that John introduced, and we are all very grateful. I want to thank him especially for his attention to these details.

The MRDS elections, however, became a little confused in the process of my absence. The Council has worked hard to straighten out the confusion. We will clarify the process and report on that and other issues at our next meeting in Kalamazoo. Meanwhile, you have a ballot that looks a little different from what we would expect the ballot to look. In the interests both of process and equity, the Council approved nominations made at the MRDS meeting, though these were not in keeping with our constitutional processes.

We have appointed Jesse Hurlbut to edit the newsletter and we look forward to Jesse's using his good energies to provide both cyber-editions and hard copies of a fine newsletter. We hope through this process to establish the newsletter increasingly as a creditable intellectual journal as well as a source of information. You can help with this.

This means that we must elect a new secretary. Unfortunately, the odd nomination process that gave us choices for offices where we did not expect them did not provide choices for secretary/treasurer. We are grateful to Gloria Betcher for her willingness to take on this important job. If you wish to vote for someone else, you may write in that vote.

Those who are going to the MLA should make a strong effort to get to both of our sessions. Come to the HAPPY HOUR! I look forward to seeing you there and to working with you at a strong planning meeting in Kalamazoo in May 2000.

Best wishes,
Milla Cozart Riggio

MRDS Officers

President: Milla Riggio, Trinity College (Hartford, CT):
milla.riggio@mail.trincoll.edu

Vice President: John Coldewey (1999), Univ. of Washington:
jcjc@u.washington.edu

Secretary/Treasurer: Jesse D. Hurlbut, Brigham Young Univ.:
jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu

Council Members

Shirley E. Carnahan (2002), Univ. of Colorado, Boulder:
carnahan@spot.colorado.edu

Garrett PJ Epp (2002), Univ. of Alberta:
Garrett.Epp@ualberta.ca

James Stokes (2001), Univ. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point:
jstokes@uwsp.edu

Paul Whitfield White (2001), Purdue Univ.:
paul@purdue.edu

Robert Potter (2000), Univ. of California-Santa Barbara:
potter@humanitas.ucsb.edu

Max Harris (2000), Wisconsin Humanities Council:
mrharri1@facstaff.wisc.edu

MRDS Newsletter

© 1999 Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society

Editor: Jesse D. Hurlbut
Assistant Editor: Katherine Hanson
Department of French and Italian
4002 JKHB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
jesse_hurlbut@byu.edu

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