Play Time - (Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture) by Daisy Black (Hardcover)

About the Book

An important re-theorisation of medieval gender and anti-Semitism, centring biblical drama as a source of evidence for lay attitudes towards scriptural time. Interrogating the Christian preoccupation with a superseded Jewish past, the book asks how this model is subverted by characters who experience time differently.

Book Synopsis

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 Interrogating the Christian preoccupation with what it asserted was a superseded Jewish past, it asks how models of supersession and typology are subverted when placed in dramatic dialogue with characters who experience time differently.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.

From the Back Cover

Play time examines the relationship between time, gender and anti-Semitism in late-medieval biblical drama. It produces an important re-theorisation of the ways both gender and Judaism have been considered, as well as arguing that medieval drama provides a source for examining lay attitudes towards time in Hebrew and Christian narratives.

The book charts the conflicts 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 conflicts provide crucial evidence of the ways late-medieval lay producers, performers and audiences were themselves encouraged to experience and understand time.

Dealing with plays often taught at undergraduate level, as well as less familiar material, Play time will be useful for students and scholars working on medieval performance, medieval gender and queer studies, Jewish-Christian studies and time and periodisation.

Review Quotes

'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 Black's 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 Black's Play Time has much to offer scholars of early English drama and of literature and culture more broadly.'
Studies in the Age of Chaucer

'Given its focus on some of the greatest hits of the canon of early English drama and its fresh and insightful readings of familiar texts, Play Time will reward the attention of both scholars of medieval drama and those working in adjacent fields... Black demonstrates conclusively that multiple temporalities exist playfully side by side within medieval biblical drama and that the hegemony of Christian time is always under threat from history, which rarely is content to remain in the past.'
The Medieval Review

About the Author

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