Overview of my master's research

Late medieval England was a time characterised by faith, and by the colourful, extravagant and exuberant expression of that faith. My research explores the ‘performativity of faith’ in this perod, focusing primarily on the city of York. As such its broad timespan is roughly the period from the late fourteenth century (the date of the first mention of the York cycle plays) through to the mid-sixteenth (with the  Reformation’s banning of the plays and alteration of the liturgy).

    My chief interest is the relationship between piety and the public demonstration, or performance, of that piety. I am examining in particular how the rite of the Mass can be viewed as a drama of faith and how the dramaturgy of this Latin ritual links to that of the vernacular mystery plays (specifically the York cycle). In so doing I aim to determine the relationship between plays and liturgy and the ways in which the drama of each is both influenced by and differs from the other. This involves considering the different motivations for the performance of piety - devotion, worship, edification, instruction, entertainment, social inclusion, social exclusion - and how they intersect and overlap. I believe that this will lead to a fuller and more detailed understanding of how different modes of performing faith situated themselves within, and interacted with, the wider culture of the late Middle Ages.

    The thesis will be constructed around the Passion and notions of sacrifice. As the Mass was regarded by the medieval populace as a literal re-enactment of Christ’s death on Calvary, and as the Crucifixion sequence - the visual representation of that sacrifice - forms the climax of the York cycle, it seems logical to take the Passion as a centrepoint for comparing and contrasting the two genres. Using the Passion as a base allows linking into the medieval preoccupation with the Body of Christ and examination of the differing function this has in the Mass and the plays. Furthermore, it  encourages consideration of other kinds of Passion literature, including Passion poetry (The Northern Passion, for example) and para-liturgical material such as the York Hours of the Cross and the Lay Folks Mass Book. Such literature, in common with the plays’ Passion sequence and to some extent the liturgy of the Mass, displays an overarching concern with the depiction of Christ’s suffering and is clearly intended to generate an affective response on the part of the audience. Consequently, reading this material alongside the plays and Mass allows comparison of the treatment of the Christ figure across a wide range of genres, and will provide insight into how and why the presentation of the  suffering Body of Christ was used for the generation of pious emotion in medieval audiences.