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

(Hardback)

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Description

This book presents an important re-theorisation of gender and anti-Semitism in medieval biblical drama. It charts conflicts staged between dramatic personae in plays that represent theological transitions, including the Incarnation, Flood, Nativity and Bethlehem slaughter. Interrogating the Christian preoccupation with what it asserted was a superseded Jewish past, it asks how models of supersession and typology are subverted when placed in dramatic dialogue with characters who experience time differently. The book employs theories of gender, performance, anti-Semitism, queer theory and periodisation to complicate readings of early theatre's biblical matriarchs and patriarchs. Dealing with frequently taught plays as well as less familiar material, the book is essential reading for specialist, undergraduate and postgraduate researchers working on medieval performance, gender and queer studies, Jewish-Christian studies and time. -- .

Reviews

'This book was a pleasure to read. The writing is clear and accessible; the voice is engaging, with sections of lovely phrasing and surprising humour.'
The Review of English Studies

'Given Blacks clear and accessible handling of theory, and the ways in which she embeds her argument in the critical history of each play she addresses, I look forward to assigning her work to my graduate students. Overall, Daisy Blacks Play Time has much to offer scholars of early English drama and of literature and culture more broadly.'
Studies in the Age of Chaucer

Author Bio

Daisy Black is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton