Enacting the Bible in Medieval and Early Modern Drama

This volume offers new perspectives on the crucial role played by the Bible in medieval culture and in the wake of the Reformation across Europe. The thirteen chapters open up new horizons for the study of biblical drama by putting special emphasis on periodisation, the intersections of biblical narrative and performance, and the strategies employed by playwrights to rework and adapt the biblical source material. The book is based on a framework of multitemporality, transnationality, and the modalities of performance and form in relation to the uses of the Bible in late-medieval and early modern drama. These aspects are not to be treated as separate or distinct phenomena, but are intertwined: particular modalities of performance evolve, adapt, and are recreated as they intersect with different historical times and circumstances. These intersections pertain to aspects such as dramatic traditions, confessional and religious rites, dogmas and debates, conceptualisations of performance and form, and audience response - whenever the Bible is evoked for performative purposes. Stressing the presence of both biblical and contemporary concerns in the periods under discussion, Enacting the Bible conceives of biblical drama as a central participant in the dynamic struggle to both interpret and translate the Bible. The double focus on formal elements and the multilayeredness of time allows us to cast the idea of the Bible as a generator of meaning into sharper relief.