8th November Lesson Notes

Plays = opere teatrali

Plays:

• Comedy
• Farce
• Tragedy

To perform = mettere in scena

When we speak about plays, tragedy, comedy or farce, written to be performed we refer to a literary genre called drama. The theatre is a place opened or closed where performances are given. Whenever we think about a text for the theatre we have to think of a text written to be performed. Theatres as buildings to host plays were built in the Renaissance.

But what about drama in the Middle Ages?

Ritual is sort of celebration which employs somebody who sends a message and audience receives it.

Medieval drama developed from the ritual of the Church.

A ritual implies some questions and some answers given by an active audience.

Drama was used to give teaching to illiterate.

Representation is the man's need to present to the other in different ways to reach different purposes.

Liturgical drama as a drama to result the liturgy.

At the beginning drama was performed inside the church, it was concerned with religious topics and it was a mean to instruct people who went to church on religious mystery and episode. A further step was when performances moved out of the church. This happened in the 14th century. Religious and dramatic performances were offered during the main festivals like Corpus Christi in June (season of nice), so religious performances at the beginning concerned with Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, who was carried out of the church in procession and around the village or town.

Gradually an evolution was recorded: a new form of drama was originated and it took place outside the church where the most relevant events from the Old and New Testament were represented by the guilts.

This kind of plays were called Miracle or Mystery plays. Morality plays developed later at the end of the 15th century more or less, they were performed by travelling companies, they represented the moral teaching in a open space on stage in open air, the main protagonist were abstract virtues or vices. It was only after the tradition of the Mystery/Miracle and Morality that plays moved indoors in the banquet halls of noble people or in the common rooms of universities why during the Middle Ages the instruction was only given by the Church.

Roland Bart scrive Frammenti di un discorso amoroso dove definisce l'amore come "la nostra piccola storia sacra". Sacro (dal latino sacer) stava per Dio, l'amore è qualcosa che avvicina l'uomo al sacro.

Nel Rinascimento vi è un cambiamento dei paradigmi medievali: to turn something upside down

Là dove stava Dio ora sta l'uomo (investigazione dell'uomo).

Middle AgesàHumanism    à    Renaissance

God              àHuman beingà Learning