N-Town Cycle | Theresa Coletti (essay date 1977)
Theresa Coletti (essay date 1977)
SOURCE: "Devotional Iconography in the N-Town Marian Plays," in Comparative Drama, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring, 1977, pp. 22-44.
[By exploring the Marian plays' connection to devotional art, Coletti reveals how the cycle embodies its audience's spiritual concerns.]
The Middle English N-Town cycle evinces an extraordinary consciousness of the motifs and interpretations that characterized late medieval devotion to the Virgin. Of the four Middle English Corpus Christi plays, only the N-Town cycle includes a group of plays, extending from The Conception of Mary to The Trial of Joseph and Mary, specifically concerned with the life of the Virgin before the birth of Christ. The scope of Marian attention in the cycle also embraces plays such as the Nativity and The Adoration of the Magi, and the N-Town manuscript shares a Death and Assumption play only with the York cycle. Many...
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