TY - BOOK AU - Coletti,Theresa AU - Coletti,Theresa TI - Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints: Theater, Gender, and Religion in Late Medieval England T2 - The Middle Ages Series SN - 9780812238006 AV - PR643.M37 C65 2004eb U1 - 822/.051609 22 PY - 2013///] CY - Philadelphia : PB - University of Pennsylvania Press, KW - Christian hagiography KW - History KW - To 1500 KW - Christianity and literature KW - England KW - English drama KW - History and criticism KW - Mysteries and miracle-plays, English KW - Theater KW - Medieval KW - Medieval, 500-1500 KW - Women and literature KW - Literature KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / Medieval KW - bisacsh KW - Cultural Studies KW - Gender Studies KW - Medieval and Renaissance Studies KW - Religion KW - Religious Studies KW - Women's Studies N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Illustrations --; Preface --; Introduction --; 1. The Drama of Saints --; 2. Some East Anglian Magdalenes --; 3. Mystic and Preacher --; 4. Gender and the Anthropology of Redemption --; 5. Bodies, Theater, and Sacred Mediations --; 6. Conclusion --; Abbreviations --; Notes --; Works Cited --; Index --; Acknowledgments; restricted access; Issued also in print N2 - A sinner-saint who embraced then renounced sexual and worldly pleasures; a woman who, through her attachment to Jesus, embodied both erotic and sacred power; a symbol of penance and an exemplar of contemplative and passionate devotion: perhaps no figure stood closer to the center of late medieval debates about the sources of spiritual authority and women's contribution to salvation history than did Mary Magdalene, and perhaps nowhere in later medieval England was cultural preoccupation with the Magdalene stronger than in fifteenth-century East Anglia.Looking to East Anglian texts including the N-Town Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, and Bokenham's Legend of Holy Women, Theresa Coletti explores how the gendered symbol of Mary Magdalene mediates tensions between masculine and feminine spiritual power, institutional and individual modes of religious expression, and authorized and unauthorized forms of revelation and sacred speech. Using the Digby play Mary Magdalene as her touchstone, Coletti engages a wide variety of textual and visual resources to make evident the discursive and material ties of East Anglian dramatic texts and feminine religion to broader traditions of cultural commentary and representation.In bringing the disciplinary perspectives of literary history and criticism, gender studies, and social and religious history to bear on specific local instances of dramatic practice, Mary Magdalene and the Drama of Saints highlights the relevance of Middle English dramatic discourse to the dynamic religious climate of late medieval England. In doing so, the book decisively challenges the marginalization of drama within medieval English studies, elucidates vernacular theater's kinship with influential late medieval religious texts and institutions, and articulates the changing possibilities for sacred representation in the decades before the Reformation UR - https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812201642 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780812201642 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780812201642/original ER -