Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Ludus) - Softcover

Ashley, Kathleen

9789042012554: Moving Subjects: Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Ludus)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9042012552 ISBN 13: 9789042012554

Publisher: Brill Rodopi, 2001

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Procession, arguably the most ubiquitous and versatile public performance mode until the seventeenth century, has received little scholarly or theoretical attention. Yet, this form of social behaviour has been so thoroughly naturalised in our accounts of western European history that it merited little comment as a cultural performance choice over many centuries until recently, when a generation of cultural historians using explanatory models from anthropology called attention to the processional mode as a privileged vehicle for articulation in its society. Their analyses, however, tended to focus on the issue of whether processions produced social harmony or reinforced social distinctions, potentially leading to conflict. While such questions are not ignored in this collection of essays, its primary purpose is to reflect upon salient theatrical aspects of processions that may help us understand how in the performance of "moving subjects" they accomplished their often transformative cultural work.

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