Olivia Robinson – författare

This collection explores playful ways of fostering creative engagements with the medieval and early modern past and its own literary and artistic products, especially among those new to their study.As scholars and teachers of early English, the contributors cover literary and cultural material from a range of genres within the Old English, Middle English, Tudor, and Stuart periods and collectively delve into a shared interest in facilitating what we might loosely define as “newcomer” or “non-specialist” encounters with the past: initial, exploratory contact in which prior knowledge cannot be assumed, whether involving creative professionals, experts from other disciplines, undergraduate and school students, or members of the public. Considering artworks and installation, theatre and performance and curation practices, case studies offer practice-based examples of learning and engagement which proceed primarily through creative and playful approaches. The case studies are arranged into two broad groups: those which work through performance and theatrical play of various kinds, and those which work through playful practices of production and making. All share a perspective of irreverence, of vivid immersion, and of the possibilities of conjuring with the past.

This important collection of essays is at the cutting edge of contemporary research on Roman law, comparative law, and legal history. The international and distinguished group of authors address some of the most lively contemporary problems in their respective fields, and provide new perspectives and insights in a wide range of areas. With a firm focus on texts and contexts, the papers come together to provide a coherent volume dedicated to one of the greatest contemporary Romanists, legal historians and comparative lawyers. The book covers Professor Watson's main fields of interest in a clear and accessible form, while also making available the scholarship of some individuals who do not normally publish in English. This fully-indexed volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of Roman law, ancient Jewish and Chinese law, legal history and comparative law, and will be useful for teaching and research in these fields.

Essays on the performance of drama from the Middle Ages, ranging from the well-known cycles of York to matter from Iran.Medieval English Theatre is the premier journal in early theatre studies. Its name belies its wide range of interest: it publishes articles on theatre and pageantry from across the British Isles up to the opening of the London playhouses and the suppression of the civic mystery cycles, and also includes contributions on European and Latin drama, together with analyses of modern survivals or equivalents, and of research productions of medieval plays.Theatrical performance is central to the groups and communities discussed in this volume, and to their particular and local expressions of faith. The articles presented explore the drama of a variety of different communities from religious orders and houses, through local, medieval and post-medieval lay communities, to contemporary worshippers. Contributors examine complex relationships between theatrical performance and faith, understanding religious theatre as a mode of worship and a method of exploring belief, as well as a site for the study of synchronous and asynchronous connections and fractures within communities. Particular topics addressed include the fragments of play-scripts surviving from the monastery at Mont-St-Michel; the Barking Abbey Easter celebrations; and how the sixteenth-century community which owned the surviving copy of the Towneley plays might have understood them in relation to their own faith. The volume is completed with an exploration of traditional Iranian religious theatre from an ethnographic perspective, in a bid to uncover and understand its very particular effects on the contemporary communities who perform and attend it in the twenty-first century.ELISABETH DUTTON and OLIVA ROBINSON run the Medieval Convent Drama project, based at the University of Fribourg and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which provides the impetus for this special issue of Medieval English Theatre. Contributors: Aurélie Blanc, Eleanor Lucy Deacon, George Gandy, Camille Marshall, James Stokes