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Aurélie Blanc - Female Performance and Spectatorship in a Medieval Nunnery, Häftad

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

Female Performance and Spectatorship in a Medieval Nunnery

The "Elevatio" and "Visitatio sepulchri" of Barking Abbey in Practice

Av Aurélie Blanc

Del i serien Early Social Performance

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Beskrivning
Medieval women were active in many performative activities, including plays and ceremonies performed in nunneries. This volume focuses on monastic performances and, in particular, on performances given in the English abbey of Barking. The Barking ceremonies, commonly referred to as the Elevatio and Visitatio sepulchri, display complex ties with both drama and liturgy. The book uses historical and archaeological evidence to propose a discussion of the nuns’ participation in these ceremonies—as performers, but also as scribes, composers, and patrons—and of the Elevatio and Visitatio’s potential effects on their performers and spectators. It goes on to address related questions through the lens of a modern performance of the ceremonies, considering their relevance today. Discussion is presented within the context of a general overview of female performance in the Middle Ages.
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Aurélie Blanc is a lecturer at the University of Fribourg. Her research on convent drama was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2018 she was awarded the Dobson scholarship.

Recensioner i media

After matins on Easter in the early fifteenth century, the nuns and clergy of Barking Abbey performed two ceremonies in the church that blended Latin chant with movement, props, and costumes: the Elevatio, which portrays the Harrowing of Hell and Christ’s Resurrection, and the Visitatio sepulchri, where the Three Marys (Mary Magdalen, Mary mother of James, and Mary Salome) visit Christ’s tomb and, after Mary Magdalen meets Jesus, announce Christ’s Resurrection. Such “dramatic liturgical ceremonies”--terminology Blanc uses to convey their fluid and dual nature--were a relatively common feature of medieval monastic life: Elevatio, Visitatio and other similar ceremonies survive from male and female monasteries across Europe.Blanc’s monograph seeks to understand how the performance of these two dramatic liturgical ceremonies affected the performers and audience at Barking Abbey. She does this by analyzing the Barking ceremonies in their historical context and by staging a modern performance of them.[...]Blanc offers a fascinating case study of Barking’s dramatic liturgical ceremonies and an example of how modern staging can elucidate scholarly questions about performance and liturgy. I would especially recommend watching the recording of the performance (the URL is provided on p. 133) while referring to the production script (Appendix 2). There, one can see the solemnity of the performance in action, as well as the inseparability of the dramatic and the liturgical elements

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