John Lydgate's "Mumming at Windsor": Clothilda, Women's Steadfastness, and Lancastrian Rule
Lydgate’s “Mumming at Windsor,” performed before Henry VI and his household in 1429, is not the straightforward work of propaganda that it has been taken to be. Lydgate interjects ironic observations about women into his ostensibly earnest propaganda celebrating Henry’s Gallic roots. These observations may have awakened Lydgate’s audience from complacent spectatorship and invited them to question his sincerity throughout. Lydgate conveys a complex message, consonant with the troubled politics that emerge elsewhere in his writings, even as he trumpets his support for the English claim to France.
Drama, Play, and Game: English Festive Culture in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
How was it possible for drama, especially biblical representations, to appear in the Christian West given the church's condemnation of the theatrum of the ancient world?In a book with radical implications for the study of medieval literature, Lawrence Clopper resolves this perplexing question. "Drama, Play, and Game" demonstrates that the theatrum repudiated by medieval clerics was not "theater" as we understand the term today. Clopper contends that critics have misrepresented Western stage history because they have assumed that theatrum designates a place where drama is performed. While theatrum was thought of as a site of spectacle during the Middle Ages, the term was more closely connected with immodest behavior and lurid forms of festive culture. Clerics were not opposed to liturgical representations in churches, but they strove ardently to suppress May games, ludi, festivals, and liturgical parodies. Medieval drama, then, stemmed from a more vernacular tradition than previously acknowledged-one developed by England's laity outside the boundaries of clerical rule.
The Mound on the Mount: A Possible Solution to the Problem with Jerusalem
Following Knauf's suggestion (2000), the article raises the possibility that in most periods in the second and first millennia BCE the main built-up area of Jerusalem was limited to a mound on the Temple Mount. This mound, which may have covered an area of five hectares and more, was boxed-in under the Herodian platform. At these periods activity in the City of David ridge was restricted to the area near the Gihon spring. In the Iron IIB and late Hellenistic Periods the fortified settlement expanded simultaneously to both the City of David ridge and the southwestern hill. In these two periods there was no need to fortify the western side of the City of David, as this line ran in the middle of the city.