Theater and the Sacred in the Middle Ages

The book presents a constructivist theory of relations between artistic forms and religious phenomena ("recapitulatory aesthetics"). The main theoretical concepts and knowledge resources are religion as a cultural system, social history, and aesthetics of main drama genres developed in the Middle Ages.

The book presents a theory of relationships between the forms of devotion
and early drama genres. The historical background is the circumstances of the Church becoming independent of the Empire. A theological and philosophical aspect of the transformation of piety at the time was the specification of the ontological status of the sacred (spiritualization) and "shifting it to Heaven" (transcendentalization). In opposition to a theory of Western civilization as a process of increasing individual self-control, the author argues for the need to take into account purely religious conditions (the idea of recapitulation). This allows the author to develop a holistic aesthetics for the religiously inspired creativity in the period spanning the 11th-15th centuries and to propose a new typology of medieval drama.

Autorentext

Andrzej D brówka is Professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His writings and scholarly editions cover medieval literary theory, early drama and theater, theory of historiography, medieval chronicles, preaching, Netherlandic studies, literary medievalism, and digital humanities.

Klappentext

The book presents a theory of relationships between the forms of devotion and early drama genres. The historical background is the circumstances of the Church becoming independent of the Empire. A theological and philosophical aspect of the transformation of piety at the time was the specification of the ontological status of the sacred (spiritualization) and "shifting it to Heaven" (transcendentalization). In opposition to a theory of Western civilization as a process of increasing individual self-control, the author argues for the need to take into account purely religious conditions (the idea of recapitulation). This allows the author to develop a holistic aesthetics for the religiously inspired creativity in the period spanning the 11th-15th centuries and to propose a new typology of medieval drama.

Inhalt

The main research perspectives Ontology of the sacred Different forms of piety Social communication Progress of human subjectivity Historical contextualization of early drama genres in medieval civilization Cognitive-constructivist approach