Module description
This module examines varieties of ceremony, ritual and performance in medieval culture. Play texts, including extracts from cycle plays and single plays, are studied in their performance context and in relation to the visual arts, church rites and historical practices. Religious performance is examined via the church-based forms of sermon and liturgy and the freer form activities of holy women. Finally, the module looks at performative selfhood in the secular world: the performance of individual and corporate identities in medieval London; the performance of gender, sex and love in the household.
Assessment details
1 x 1000 word essay (30%), 1 x 2000 word essay (70%)
Teaching pattern
One lecture and one seminar weekly
Suggested reading list
The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Oxford: OUP, 2008) or The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005).