Post Death / After Life on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)
Organizer Name
Frank M. Napolitano
Organizer Affiliation
Radford Univ.
Presider Name
Kisha G. Tracy
Presider Affiliation
Fitchburg State Univ.
Paper Title 1
"Loke þat зe be of ryght good chere": From Counsel to Christ in the N-Town Lazarus
Presenter 1 Name
Frank M. Napolitano
Paper Title 2
Night of the Living Bread: Resurrection Theology in the Chester "Antichrist" Play
Presenter 2 Name
Cameron Hunt McNabb
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Southeastern Univ.
Paper Title 3
Saints and Whores: Anatomizing Female Sexuality on the Early Modern Stage
Presenter 3 Name
Christine Gottlieb
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Los Angeles
Start Date
10-5-2013 10:00 AM
Session Location
Fetzer 1045
Description
This panel will focus on the concerns and preoccupations with dead, undead, or newly-risen bodies in medieval and Early Modern drama. The various depictions of Lazarus, Christ, and zombies in medieval drama, and the ghost of King Hamlet or the forms of Helen and Alexander on the Early Modern stage are but a few examples of the “dead” interacting with players and audiences. Moreover, examples abound of the dramatic importance of dead bodies’ presence on the stage. The miracles of the Virgin Mary’s body at her assumption or the spectacle of Julius Caesar’s corpse during Marc Antony’s speech show the devotional, rhetorical, or political potential of the inanimate body. How do these scenes reflect or refract the cultural conceptions of death and the afterlife in the plays’ original context or in the modern reproductions? What “authority” do the (un)dead hold over characters and audience?
Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby
Post Death / After Life on the Medieval and Early Modern Stage
Fetzer 1045
This panel will focus on the concerns and preoccupations with dead, undead, or newly-risen bodies in medieval and Early Modern drama. The various depictions of Lazarus, Christ, and zombies in medieval drama, and the ghost of King Hamlet or the forms of Helen and Alexander on the Early Modern stage are but a few examples of the “dead” interacting with players and audiences. Moreover, examples abound of the dramatic importance of dead bodies’ presence on the stage. The miracles of the Virgin Mary’s body at her assumption or the spectacle of Julius Caesar’s corpse during Marc Antony’s speech show the devotional, rhetorical, or political potential of the inanimate body. How do these scenes reflect or refract the cultural conceptions of death and the afterlife in the plays’ original context or in the modern reproductions? What “authority” do the (un)dead hold over characters and audience?
Carolyn Coulson-Grigsby