The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens

208 Pages·1998·1.51 MB·English

by  James J. Paxson

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title: The Performance of Middle English Culture : Essays On Chaucer
and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens
author: Paxson, James J.; Clopper, Lawrence M.; Tomasch, Sylvia.;
Stevens, Martin.
publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd.
isbn10 | asin: 0859915271
print isbn13: 9780859915274
ebook isbn13: 9780585218656
language: English
subject English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and
criticism, Chaucer, Geoffrey,--d. 1400--Criticism and
interpretation, Chaucer, Geoffrey,--d. 1400--Knowledge--
Performing arts, English drama--To 1500--History and criticism,
Drama, Medieval--Histo
publication date: 1998
lcc: PR251.P47 1998eb
ddc: 820.9/001
subject: English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and
criticism, Chaucer, Geoffrey,--d. 1400--Criticism and
interpretation, Chaucer, Geoffrey,--d. 1400--Knowledge--
Performing arts, English drama--To 1500--History and criticism,
Drama, Medieval--Histo
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The Performance Of Middle English Culture
Theatricality as a cultural process is vitally important in the middle ages; it encompasses not only the thematic importation of
dramatic images into the Canterbury Tales, but also the social and ideological 'performativities' of the mystery and morality
plays, metadramatic investments, and the ludic energies of Chaucerian discourses in general. The twelve essays collected here
address for the first time this intersection, using contemporary theory and historical scholarship to treat a number of important
critical problems, including the anthropology of theatrical performance; gender; allegory; Chaucerian metapoetics; intertextual
play and jouissance; social mediation and rhetoric; genre; and the institutionality of medieval studies. The volume is a tribute to
the distinguished medievalist MARTIN STEVENS, whose own work on Chaucer and the medieval drama is honoured here.
JAMES J. PAXSON is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida; LAWRENCE M. CLOPPER is Professor of
English at Indiana University; SYLVIA TOMASCH is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College, City University of
New York.

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The Performance Of Middle English Culture
Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens
Edited by
James J. Paxson
Lawrence M. Clopper
Sylvia Thomasch
D.S. BREWER

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Page iv
(c)Editors and Contributors 1998
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
First published 1998
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 0 85991 527 1
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell &Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USA
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The performance of Middle English culture : essays on Chaucer and the drama in honor of Martin Stevens / edited by James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, Sylvia Tomasch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-85991-527-1 (acid-free paper)
1. English literature- Middle English, 1100- 1500- History and criticism. 2. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400- Criticism and interpretation. 3. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400-
Knowledge- Performing arts. 4. English dram- To 1500- History and criticism. 5. Drama, Medieval - History and criticism. 6. Performing arts - England -
History. 7. England - Civilization - 1066-1485. 8. Performing arts in literature. I. Paxson, James J. II. Clopper, Lawrence M., 1941. III. Tomasch, Sylvia. IV. Stevens, Martin.
PR251.P47 1998
820.9'001 - dc21 98-24827
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain byScr:St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

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Contents
List of Contributors vi
Foreword ix
Introduction
James J.Paxson 1
Sponsorship, Reflexivity and Resistance: Cultural Readings of the
York Cycle Plays
Kathleen Ashley 9
Eliding the "Medieval": Renaissance "New Historicism" and
Sixteenth-Century Drama
Richard K. Emmerson 25
"Se in what stat thou doyst indwell": The Shifting Constructions of
Gender and Power Relations in Wisdom
Marlene Clark, Sharon Kraus, Pamela Sheingorn 43
The Chaucerian Critique of Medieval Theatricality
Seth Lerer 59
The Experience of Modernity in Late Medieval Literature:
Urbanism, Experience and Rhetoric in Some Early Descriptions of
London
John M. Ganim 77
Noah's Wife's Flood
Alfred David 97
Textual Pleasure in the Miller's Tale
Richard Daniels 111
Petrarch, Chaucer and the Making of the Clerk
Warren Ginsberg 125
The Crisis of Mediation in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde
Robert W. Hanning 143
Reading Chaucer Ab Ovo: Mock-Exemplum in the Nun's Priest's Tale
Peter W. Travis 161
A Postmodern Performance: Counter-Reading Chaucer 's Clerk's Tale
and Maxine Hong Kingston's "No Name Woman"
William McClellan 183
Tabula Gratulatoria 197

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Contributors
About the Contributors
Kathleen Ashley is Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. She has edited a collection of essays Victor Turner
and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology (University of Indiana Press, 1990), co-edited
with Pamela Sheingorn Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St Anne in Late Medieval Society (University of Georgia Press, 1990),
and is completing books on Moving Subjects: The Semiotics of Processional Performance and Writing Faith (co-authored with
Pamela Sheingorn)
Richard K. Emmerson is Professor and Chair of English at Western Washington University. Interested in the intersection of
medieval literature, art, and religion with modern theory, he has published on drama, illuminated manuscripts, and visionary
poetry. His books include Antichrist in the Middle Ages (University of Washington Press, 1981); Approaches to Teaching
Medieval Drama (MLA, 1990); The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992),
with Ronald Herzman; and The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 1993), with Bernard McGinn. With
David Hult he has recently published a translation and commentary on the Old French play, Jour Du Jugement for the Early
European Drama in Translation Series. He is currently working on a book-length project, Medieval Literacies: Image,
Language, and Ideology in Late Medieval Manuscripts
Marlene Clark teaches English at Lehman College (CUNY). She is currently at work on a project historicizing the life-cycle of
mature medieval and Renaissance women represented in drama.
Sharon Karus studied medieval drama at the City University of New York Graduate Center and is now doing research on
theories of gender, the Middle English morality plays, and critical feminism in contemporary theory. Her book of poems,
Generation, was published by Alice James Books in 1997.
Pamela Sheingorn, a Professor of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center (CUNY), has written numerous articles on
the relationship of medieval art and drama. She is the author of The Easter Sepulchre in England (1987) and co-editor with
Kathleen Ashley of Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society(1990). She has edited and

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translated The Book of Sainte Foy's Miracles (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), and is currently co-authoring with
Kathleen Ashley an interpretive study of the cult of Sainte Foy. She is co-organizer of the Medieval Feminist Art History Project
and is engaged in a study of the constructions of gender and the body in medieval visual culture.
Seth Lerer is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford, where he is currently Chairman of the Department of
Comparative Literature. His most recent publications include Chaucer and His Readers (Princeton University Press, 1993;
paperback, 1996), and Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
John M. Ganim has authored Style and Consciousness in Middle English Narrative (Princeton University Press, 1983) and
Chaucerian Theatricality (Princeton University Press, 1990). He is Professor of English, University of California at Riverside,
where he is also the coordinator of the Focussed Research Project on Architecture, Urbanism, and Theory.
Alfred David is Professor of English Emeritus at Indiana University. He is the author of The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in
Chaucer's Poetry (Indiana University Press, 1976), co-editor of The Minor Poems for the Chaucer Variorum (University of
Oklahoma Press, 1982), editor of The Romaunt of the Rose for the Riverside Chaucer, and editor of the Middle Ages in The
Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Richard Daniels, Associate Professor of English at Oregon State University, has published poetry and fiction as well as articles
on Chaucer, Medieval drama, and literary and critical theory.
Warren Ginsberg is Professor of English at SUNY Albany. He is author of TThe Cast of Character: the Representation of
Personality in Ancient and Medieval Literature (University of Toronto Press, 1983) and editor of Ideas of Order in the Middle
Ages (SUNY Press, 1990). He has also edited Wynnere and Wastoure and the Parlement of the Thre Ages (Middle English Text
Series, 1992). Forthcoming is a book titled Dante's Aesthetics of Being from University of Michigan Press.
Robert W. Hanning, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, has authored The Vision of
History in Early Britain (Columbia University Press, 1966), The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance (Yale University Press,
1977), and co-edited the Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture (Yale University Press, 1983). He has translated and co-
edited, with Joan Ferrante, The Lais of Marie de France (Dutton, 1978). He is now completing a book on the subject of social
game, rhetoric, and mediation in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Peter W. Travis is Professor of English at Dartmouth College. He has published articles on the medieval drama, Chaucer, and
medieval literary theory and is author of Dramatic Design in the Chester Cycle (University of

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Chicago Press, 1982). He is at present working on a book about Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale.
William McClellan is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College (CUNY). He has published articles on medieval
rhetoric, textual criticism, and cultural theory. He is completing a book entitled The Griselda Complex: Chaucer's "Clerk's Tale"
and the Dialogics of Power, Knowledge, and the Subjugation of Women in Late Medieval English Culture.
About the Editors
James J. Paxson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida. He is the author of The Poetics of Personification
(Cambridge University Press, 1994) and is working on a book about master tropes in critical theory and the social construction
of the critical institution. He has co-edited Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer with Cynthia
Gravlee (Susquehanna University Press, 1998), and is Associate Editor of Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and
Renaissance Studies.
Lawrence M. Clopper , Professor of English and Director of the Medieval Studies Institute at Indiana University, is the editor of
the dramatic documents of Chester for the Records of Early English Drama and author of "Songes of Rechelesness" :Langland
and the Franciscans (University of Michigan Press, 1997). Currently, he is the President of the Medieval and Renaissance
Drama Society and recently received a Guggenheim Fellowship for work on a book on medieval drama.
Sylvia Tomasch is Associate Professor of English at Hunter College (CUNY). She has published articles on Dante,
Chaucer,mappae mundi, and the alliterative revival. She has co-edited a collection from the University of Pennsylvania Press
entitled Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, and is completing a book on medieval
geography, cartography, and literature.

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Foreword
This volume came together as part of an effort to celebrate the retirement in 1994 of Martin Stevens, who served the City
University of New York as Distinguished Professor of English as well as Dean of Baruch College. He also held positions at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook, Ohio State University, and the University of Louisville, where he taught many,
many students in courses ranging from the medieval through the modern. He has published books, dozens of articles, and edited
editions of medieval poets and play cycles that now serve as standards in the field of medieval studies.
To honor so long and varied a career, three of his former students- Lawrence Clopper, Jim Paxson, and Sylvia Tomasch -
planned to accordingly speak to the stages in his carreer, a career shaped by a wealth of interests and marked by fine
achievements, by assembling a collection of thematically and methodologically interconnected essays. Martin Stevens has
contributed to studies in linguistics. Old English, medieval Latin, Chaucer, the Middle English drama, Shakespeare, and critical
theory; he has also written on pedagogy, the teaching of college writing, and medieval iconography. Capturing so broad and
profound a contribution in an honorary, representative volume has no doubt been difficult, perhaps impossible. Yet the essays
collected in The Performance of Middle English Culturewould not have been possible without both the intellectual and the
personal impetus of Martin Stevens. Many of the contributors to this volume call Martin a personal friend; all acknowledge the
special influence his intellectual work has had on their own scholarly productions and humanistic thinking.
After bouts of severe illness, and after a permanent move from New York to San Francisco, Martin continues to be a productive
writer and thinker-working on projects ranging from the theory of manuscript editing in a postmodern era to personal memoirs
that will take in stride escape from the Holocaust, a brief and tumultuous life in Israel, emigration to the United States, and the
long ascent in academic life. With his wife Rose Zimbardo-whom we also praise as a co-survivor, a paramount scholar of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, a friend, an excellent and loving human being-he has achieved the lof and dom, in our minds and
hearts, of only the rare and elect.

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