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"In its original form this book was approved as a thesis for the Ph. D. degree of the University of Bristol in 1974"--Pref. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 434-441).

This thesis explores the implications of the relationships between building trade guilds and the pageants they produced in York, and examines this relationship over the two-hundred-year production of the York Cycle. Because this relationship and the reception of any dramatic performance is heavily influenced by context, we need to look closer at the social, political, and economic environment of late medieval York in order to better understand the range of interpretations available to the Cycle's original audience. Doing so also allows us to witness the issues of identity and community that are negotiated throughout these plays. Chapter 1 examines the guilds responsible for most day-to-day construction (the plasters, tilers, and carpenters) and explores the interpretations that the conjunction of guild casting, play text, and historical context invites. The Plasterers' "Creation" deals with issues of labour and political power, economic fluctuations influence representations of family and community in the Tilers' "Nativity," and the Carpenters' "Resurrection" explores issues of integrity and urban corruption, while also representing a struggle for social authority. Chapter Two considers the participation of groups outside of civic jurisdiction, most particularly the Masons, and investigates the ways in which the York Cycle may have cut across boundaries (or united "separate" groups) instead of, or as well as, reinforcing them. Finally, the changing contexts that in turn changed (or re-focused) the meanings of these texts reveal the boundaries over and through which concepts of identity and community were negotiated.

Masks, actions, words. These three elements provide a starting point for a study of the devil figure as represented in Middle French saint's plays (mysteres hagiographiques). / An urban, popular art, mediaeval French theatre addressed a broad public that it was considered useful to both edify---particularly in the case of the mysteres---and divert. The mysteres represented and interpreted the world. In this theatre, the devil figures embody Evil and adversity, but also alterity. Placed in opposition to the saints and the sublime inhabitants of Heaven, they appear grotesque, crude and carnivalesque. Often the mainspring of the action, they are essential to the plot of the saint's play; noisy and garrulous, they are a no less necessary element of the mysteres' discourse on the world (tangible or intangible, earthly or celestial). The devil, ever ill-intentioned, concocts evil plots and engages in infernal dialogues---which the mystere presents in order to further its edifying goals and propagate its unifying and didactic message. / This dissertation examines some of the most important aspects, in terms of the mystere's reception, of the devil figure. The first part, which deals with diabolical masks, discusses their external features (scenery, costumes, gestures, disguises) and certain of their linguistic characteristics. The second part studies the actions of the devils themselves. Their principal activities are identified and defined, and divided into three broad categories, according to whether the devils attempt to draw human beings and their activities into their sphere of influence, or commit evil deeds, or fail in their baleful plans and end up serving God despite themselves. The third part of the thesis studies diabolical discourse. More specifically, it analyses the relationship between the speech of devils (traditionally perceived as deceitful) and truth. Using the concepts of place and authority, we can read certain instances of this speech as illegitimate, while an examination of the workings of the discourse of diabolical seduction reveals the twisted nature which the mysteres attributed to devils. / A study of the devil figure thus provides an opportunity to understand in some measure the role the mysteres hagiographiques played in relation to the mediaeval public, whose perception of the other (as well as of the same) the saint's plays represented even as they helped construct it.

"In its original form this book was approved as a thesis for the Ph. D. degree of the University of Bristol in 1974"--Pref. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 434-441).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1940. / "English versions of the Fifteen signs of doom": p. [141]-148. "Unprinted texts of the Fifteen signs": p. [149]. "A select bibliography of works used in this study": p. [151]-156.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1935. / Vita. Published also without thesis note. "Bibliographie": p. 202-211.

The author's inaugural dissertation, Berlin, 1924. / "Alphabetisches verzeichnis der vornehmlich benutzten literatur": p. vi-xii.

Thesis--Giessen. / Bibliography: p. 138-144.