Play Time: Gender, Anti-Semitism and Temporality in Medieval Biblical Drama

Abstract

The book charts the confl icts staged between dramatic personae in plays that represent theological transitions or ruptures, such as the Incarnation, Flood, Nativity and Bethlehem slaughter. Interrogating medieval models of supersession and typology, it asks how such models are subverted when placed in dialogue with characters who experience alternative readings of time. It employs various theoretical lenses to complicate readings of early theatre’s biblical matriarchs and patriarchs and argues that confl icts provide crucial evidence of the ways latemedieval lay producers, performers and audiences were themselves encouraged to experience and understand time.