Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

DeepDyve requires Javascript to function. Please enable Javascript on your browser to continue.

Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture

Part of the Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance Book Series

DOI: 10.1057/9780230109070

ISBN: 978-1-349-28771-0

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US - Springer Journals

Nov 18, 2015

LitStream

Chapter 1Introduction: Devotional Modes of Becoming in Late Medieval York

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 1 –13

[I remember distinctly the experience that sparked my passion for theatre. I was ten years old and sat in the front row of the mezzanine at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. During the performance, I leaned forward, my forehead pressed to the balcony railing and eyes glued to the stage. In...
LitStream

Chapter 2Performance Literacy: Theorizing Medieval Devotional Seeing

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 15 –44

[The Book of Margery Kempe offers ample evidence of imagery’s prominent role within lay devotional practices. The book’s author suggests that religious images frequently triggered Kempe’s powerful physical reactions: this creature saw a beautiful image of our Lady called a pieta. And through...
LitStream

Chapter 3Material Devotion: Objects as Performance Events

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 45 –66

[The medieval laity approached religious media with bodies prepared to construct devotional meaning from their live, physical encounters with these works. I have called this devotional tactic performance literacy because it involves seeing and relating to images and objects as if they are live...
LitStream

Chapter 4Claiming Devotional Space

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 67 –86

[The most prominent architectural feature of medieval—and twenty-first-century—York is its Minster.1 The cathedral’s overall length is 518 feet, the breadth of its transepts measures 249 feet, and its central tower rises 197 feet high. Although the Minster stands on the site of a seventh-century...
LitStream

Chapter 5Devotion and Conceptual Blending

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 87 –113

[Laypeople used funerals, objects, and images to extend themselves physically into the devotional lives of those who survived them. By tracing themselves into the bodies of friends and family members, thereby promoting embodied remembrance, laypeople were able to retain a posthumous presence in...
LitStream

Chapter 6Pious Body Rhythms

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 115 –132

[York’s Corpus Christi pageants functioned as material anchors, supplying spectators with both concrete images and concrete experiences of the Christian narrative and its abstract theological concepts.1 But in addition to offering the audience an opportunity to see and, perhaps, “live in” these...
LitStream

Chapter 7Empathy, Entrainment, and Devotional Instability

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 133 –149

[The York cycle, with its many instances of pious seeing, seems to be the perfect performance to stage as part of Corpus Christi Day, a feast celebrated through the visible presentation and procession of the Eucharist. But the relationship between the cycle and the other Corpus Christi events was...
LitStream

Chapter 8Coda: Medieval Sensual Piety and a Few Twenty-First-Century Religious Rhythms

Stevenson, Jill

Pages: 151 –163

[Whether they are discussing mental images, live performance events, or material objects and spaces, time and again writers in the Middle Ages call attention to the sensual nature of seeing, and to the moral, spiritual, and physical implications of that sensuality. Rather than reflecting medieval...

results per page

Prev
1
Next

Browse All eBooks