Staging the conflicted community: Cultural ambiguity, economic abuse, and the politics of accommodation in the N -Town Passion

Paula Margo von Loewenfeldt, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation challenges the perception of the N-Town Passion as a uniformly devotional and at all times pedagogic late-medieval dramatic text, one that has been held up as an exemplar of a monolithic world view of fifteenth-century East Anglian society. It engages in a close reading of the playtext, teases out nuanced reference, and uncovers systems of sustained topical allusion. Disclosed are wide-ranging cultural, economic, and political critiques of the contemporary milieu that redefine the Passion playwright as exhibiting hybrid, transitional, and often inherently subversive beliefs. Similarly, by excavating the play's formal stage direction design and comparing it to other East Anglian playtexts, this study at once repositions the N-Town Passion within the region's extraordinarily rich, highly innovative dramatic tradition and negates the presumption that a late-medieval Passion play was necessarily a theatrical deadend.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

White, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Medieval literature|British and Irish literature|Theater|Literature

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