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Elisabeth Dutton
  • Fribourg, Switzerland

Elisabeth Dutton

  • I head the Early Drama at Oxford project, which examines plays written and performed in Oxford Colleges between 1485 ... moreedit
Elisabeth Dutton focuses on how Reformation Protestant writers asserted the historicity of scriptural events. She asks a crucial question: How do the Protestant playwrights manage to create any form of ‘scene’ by which their audiences... more
Elisabeth Dutton focuses on how Reformation Protestant writers asserted the historicity of scriptural events. She asks a crucial question: How do the Protestant playwrights manage to create any form of ‘scene’ by which their audiences might be able to situate themselves in these events? Dutton argues that to encourage these audiences, these playwrights – specifically John Bale, John Foxe, and Nicholas Grimald – used the accessible, physical reality of props to thereby overcome the challenges of presenting a Protestant history
This chapter is available under the Open Access licence CC BY NC ND, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Medieval English Theatre is an international refereed journal publishing articles on medieval and early Tudor theatre and... more
This chapter is available under the Open Access licence CC BY NC ND, Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Medieval English Theatre is an international refereed journal publishing articles on medieval and early Tudor theatre and pageantry in all its aspects (not confined to England), together with articles and records of modern survivals or equivalents. Most issues are illustrated. Contributions to be considered for future volumes are welcomed: see end of this volume and website for further information: <www.medievalenglishtheatre.co.uk>.
This essay discusses blood as &#39;proof&#39; in the late fifteenth-century Croxton Play of the Sacrament, and in Shakespeare&#39;s Macbeth. In Croxton, a bloody severed hand becomes a mark of the guilt of Jew Jonathas in torturing the... more
This essay discusses blood as &#39;proof&#39; in the late fifteenth-century Croxton Play of the Sacrament, and in Shakespeare&#39;s Macbeth. In Croxton, a bloody severed hand becomes a mark of the guilt of Jew Jonathas in torturing the eucharistic wafer; both Macbeth and his wife repeatedly allude to the ease or difficulty of washing blood off their murdering hands. Drawing evidence from historical records about how bloody effects were staged, the article considers blood as a theatrical phenomenon and the interpretations it invites
... as to those with a more specialist interest in Margery Kempe herself. ... The history had not, at that point, been published, but the first part of the manuscript, on the Black Douglases, was revised by Godscroft&#x27;s friend Sir... more
... as to those with a more specialist interest in Margery Kempe herself. ... The history had not, at that point, been published, but the first part of the manuscript, on the Black Douglases, was revised by Godscroft&#x27;s friend Sir George Douglas of Mordington along with the 11th Earl of ...
This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international ?eld of scholars including a number of leading authorities. Across the medieval... more
This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international ?eld of scholars including a number of leading authorities. Across the medieval and early modern periods, drama is seen to be a way of dissemi-nating theological and philosophical ideas. In medieval England, when literacy was low and the liturgy in Latin, drama translated and transformed spiritual truths, embodying them for a wider audience than could be reached by books alone. In Tudor England, humanist belief in the validity and potential of drama as a pedagogical tool informs the interlude, and examples of dramatized instruction abound on early modern stages. Academic drama is a particularly preg -nant locus for the exploration of drama and peda-gogy: universities and the Inns of Court trained some of the leading playwrights of the early theatre, but also supplied methods and materials that shaped professional playhouse comp...
This article discusses two Turk plays of Thomas Goffe that were performed at Christ Church in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and subsequently printed: the plays present events from late medieval history, but with extensive... more
This article discusses two Turk plays of Thomas Goffe that were performed at Christ Church in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and subsequently printed: the plays present events from late medieval history, but with extensive classical allusion. The article considers the plays' use of theatrical reference and books as props: these devices may have encouraged a particular response in the academic audiences who first saw these plays, especially influencing their attitude to the Turkish emperors who are fictionalised presentations of historical medieval figures, exotic, religiously and culturally 'other', but also made familiar by their contextualisation among the figures of a classical past, the study of which was the foundation of Tudor education.
This co-authored, commissioned book chapter explores liturgical citation, allusion, structural patterning, and other types of intertextual connection between medieval nuns' theatre and medieval Biblical and liturgical practices as forms... more
This co-authored, commissioned book chapter explores liturgical citation, allusion, structural patterning, and other types of intertextual connection between medieval nuns' theatre and medieval Biblical and liturgical practices as forms of translation.  We survey the particular acts of translation which are undertaken when Biblical material is adapted for the stage within a particular Carmelite religious house.  We consider in particular the ways in which well-known and familiar Biblical narrative is shaped for performance, and we argue that this shaping creates surprising and innovative effects.  We explore the ways in which the liturgical rite is at times 'translated' into these performances, and we suggest that translation is an activity which resonates strongly with the composition and performance of these plays.
Review of Dekker and Webster's Westward Ho! performed by Edward's Boys in 2012.
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In this paper we present an esoteric University play, Grobiana’s Nuptials, which was written by undergraduate Charles May and performed at St John’s College, Oxford in 1637. The play was edited by Ernest Rühl, whose interest in the play... more
In this paper we present an esoteric University play, Grobiana’s Nuptials, which was written by undergraduate Charles May and performed at St John’s College, Oxford in 1637.  The play was edited by Ernest Rühl, whose interest in the play was as evidence of the Grobian tradition - a  literary tradition indebted to Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff - in England.  Otherwise, scholars have largely ignored it, possibly put off by its extremely vulgar humour.  But it was very well received by University authorities when performed, and we explore its literary merits, its place in the history of theatre, and what it might tell us about early modern educational practice at the universities.
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For copyright reasons this is the submitted manuscript, not the final edited PDF, of an article now available in:
Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama 1350-1600, eds Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Leiden: Brill, 2016) pp. 204-34
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This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Notes and Queries following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version, Dutton, Elisabeth, ‘Augustine Baker and Two Manuscripts of... more
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Notes and Queries following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version, Dutton, Elisabeth,  ‘Augustine Baker and Two Manuscripts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love,’ Notes and Queries, New Series 52, no.3 (Sep. 2005) 329-37, is available online at:
http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/3/329.full.pdf+html?sid=eecc24cd-9517-4c8f-a0b5-96e1a1c2b026
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The article is available in the online journal Theta at the link above.
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The Croxton Play of the Sacrament is the only host miracle play to survive in English. But while the Croxton Play of the Sacrament readily finds a place in academic histories of anti-Semitism, sacramental theology, and violence and... more
The Croxton Play of the Sacrament is the only host miracle play to survive in English. But while the Croxton Play of the Sacrament readily finds a place in academic histories of anti-Semitism, sacramental theology, and violence and special effects in the theatre, David Lawton cautions that the theoretical approaches which the play invites tend to generate ‘mythologies’, or ‘points at which scholarly conclusions have raced ahead of the evidence’. Croxton, a farcical comedy laden with slapstick violence, is nonetheless unsettlingly multivalent. Furthermore, the Croxton Play cannot be definitively placed in a context, and because it has such a curious textual transmission, and so little is certain about the circumstances in which it was performed, the meanings which it may once have held for those who read it or saw it played are exceptionally difficult to determine. This article suggests that Croxton's purpose in the more usual, generalized sense of ‘intention’, what it ostensibly means or tells, may be in tension with its ‘purpoos’, in the sense of its action, what it shows. The article begins by addressing the few certainties and many complexities of time and place.

The full article is available via 'Oxford Handbooks Online' at the URL above.
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from the Journal of the Early Book Society vol.6 (2003), pp.140-59.
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The article is available freely online at the link below
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The modern director of a medieval play must make decisions which closely parallel those of the translator, considering the distinction formulated by Jerome between words and sense: non verbum e verbo sed sensum exprimere de sensu. To... more
The modern director of a medieval play must make decisions which closely parallel those of the translator, considering the distinction formulated by Jerome between words and sense: non verbum e verbo sed sensum exprimere de sensu.  To substitute one word for its literal equivalent in another language is not necessarily to carry across the meaning of the original. The meanings of words change, of course, with their surroundings, both within a text and more widely, within the culture in which that text is received. In order to convey the sense of the original text, the translator must consider both sorts of context. Often, of course, the translator must choose whether to prioritize literal faithfulness to the words and form of the original, or the attempt to recreate the meaning, the sense of the original for a new audience.

In theatre the author is deader than in any other art form. In the theatre, it is not only printers and publishers and critics but also actors, designers, directors who stand between the author and the reader. If medieval drama is performed today, in what ways should it be translated? The enduring appeal of the mystery plays comes partly from their still-resonant biblical narrative; they have always been translations, of biblical language but also of cultural context in order that narratives at once historical and eternal should seem immanent. Morality plays, particularly Everyman, are also still performed; their allegorization, itself a form of translation, preserves their meaning. But what of medieval plays which dealt with more worldly issues, brought into focus at precise historical moments?

This paper considers how historicization of a play can produce a reading that may be translatable, and that that translation may appeal to a modern audience as the medieval play did to its contemporary audience. The contemporary social and political concerns which form the broader context for the action of the medieval play must be translated with reference to the contemporary social and political concerns of the modern audience. Fulgens and Lucres is discussed as an example: written in the 1490s by Henry Medwall, a notary in the household of John Morton, Fulgens and Lucres reflects Medwall’s humanist education and legal interests in its debate as to whether true nobility resides in aristocratic birth or personal virtue. The play’s discussion of nobility and power may seem in many ways alien today; accordingly, the more immediate dramatic context must be included in the process of translation - staging, venue, actors, costume must reflect a translated meaning. A performance may be created which, by freeing itself from the attempt to reconstruct a historical performance, may recapture the immediacy it held for its original audience, and some of its ‘sense’. The paper will argue that this can and should be done without substantial translation or modernization of the actual language of the medieval play, so that paradoxically ‘word’ is preserved where ‘sense’ is translated.

The full article is available via the Brepols website at the link above (see 'Files').
Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres is considered the first secular play in English, because of its humanist theme and story. Does this secular narrative – moral, certainly, and the work of a cleric, but concerned with worldly morality –... more
Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres is considered the first secular play in English, because of its humanist theme and story.  Does this secular narrative – moral, certainly, and the work of a cleric, but concerned with worldly morality – exhibit also a distinctively secular dramaturgy? This is the central question explored in this chapter, although of course dramaturgy cannot be entirely separated from a play’s themes, nor from the circumstances of production. My consideration of medieval secular dramaturgy focuses on dramatic manipulations of place, and also of time. Both are curiously compromised in Fulgens and Lucres, the dramaturgy of which is, in this article, discussed alongside that of the The Croxton Play of the Sacrament and John Skelton's Magnificence.

The article can be accessed via the URL above.

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This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international field of scholars including a number of leading authorities. Across the... more
This wide-ranging volume explores relationships between drama and pedagogy in the medieval and early modern periods, with contributions from an international field of scholars including a number of leading authorities.  Across the medieval and early modern periods, drama is seen to be a way of disseminating theological and philosophical ideas. In medieval England, when literacy was low and the liturgy in Latin, drama translated and transformed spiritual truths, embodying them for a wider audience than could be reached by books alone. In Tudor England, humanist belief in the validity and potential of drama as a pedagogical tool informs the interlude, and examples of dramatized instruction abound on early modern stages. Academic drama is a particularly pregnant locus for the exploration of drama and pedagogy: universities and the Inns of Court trained some of the leading playwrights of the early theatre, but also supplied methods and materials that shaped professional playhouse compositions.
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John Gower wrote in three languages - Latin, French, and English - and their considerable and sometimes competing significance in fourteenth-century England underlies his trilingualism. The essays collected in this volume start from Gower... more
John Gower wrote in three languages - Latin, French, and English - and their considerable and sometimes competing significance in fourteenth-century England underlies his trilingualism. The essays collected in this volume start from Gower as trilingual poet, exploring Gower's negotiations between them - his adaptation of French sources into his Latin poetry, for example - as well as the work of medieval translators who made Gower's French poetry available in English. "Translation" is also considered more broadly, as a "carrying over" (its etymological sense) between genres, registers, and contexts, with essays exploring Gower's acts of translation between the idioms of varied literary and non-literary forms; and further essays investigate Gower's writings from literary, historical, linguistic, and codicological perspectives. Overall, the volume bears witness to Gower's merit and his importance to English literary history, and increases our understanding of French and Latin literature composed in England; it also makes it possible to understand and to appreciate fully the shape and significance of Gower's literary achievement and influence, which have sometimes suffered in comparison to Chaucer.
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Written in a time of plague and persecution, Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love grapples with the problem of evil and the challenge it presents to those who wish to believe in a loving God. This new version, preserves the beauty and... more
Written in a time of plague and persecution, Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love grapples with the problem of evil and the challenge it presents to those who wish to believe in a loving God. This new version, preserves the beauty and ambiguity of the original language, while rendering this classic accessible to modern readers. The introduction provides essential background information on Julian of Norwich and explores her role as a woman in the church.
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A substantially revised and updated translation of Professor Mommaers’ prize-winning Flemish book: this book is now the first in English on Hadewijch, the extraordinary woman who, in the 13th century, pioneered the use of the Flemish... more
A substantially revised and updated translation of Professor Mommaers’ prize-winning Flemish book: this book is now the first in English on Hadewijch, the extraordinary woman who, in the 13th century, pioneered the use of the Flemish vernacular and the idioms of the troubadours to write about God.  A beguine, she belonged to a revolutionary women's movement formed by "religious women" who, conscious of their gender, did not wish to enter into either marriage or a convent. Spiritually and materially independent, these first beguines came into conflict with social order, and endured the attacks of clerics, religious and secular authorities, and those in orders.
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Compilation and miscellany manuscripts were widely owned in the late middle ages, by both the laity and the clergy. Here, their possible influence on Julian of Norwich's Revelations is explored. The book argues that formal features of... more
Compilation and miscellany manuscripts were widely owned in the late middle ages, by both the laity and the clergy. Here, their possible influence on Julian of Norwich's Revelations is explored. The book argues that formal features of compilation are evident in the text, deployed by Julian to give authority and didactic force to the theological debate in which she is engaged. Combining study of compilation manuscripts and manuscripts of the Revelations with structural analysis, it suggests important new ways of reading the Revelations, and makes a strong case for compilation as a literary form with creative potential.


Reviews
"Offers a series of nigh-on faultless close readings from the Revelations, weighing its complexities of voice, form and texture with a judiciousness and balance that combine to render this book an important contribution to current Julian studies." STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER
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