3 April 2009

This is the tutorial with Timo.


                              ENGLISH DRAMA

If we look at the development of  English Drama, we see couple of stages.

Stage Zero: Tropes

text: Bible

language: Latin

written by: God

place of performance: church

time: church holidays

acted by: ministers


and then we see Mystery&Miracle Plays:

text: rewriting of Bible

language: vernacular

written by: clergymen

place of performance: stage wagons

time: church holidays

acted by: workers` guilds



and then we see Morality plays

text: no longer biblical episodes, but still influence of the Bible. Focus on the faith of the soul. Everyman. Allegorical plays determined by christian dogmas.

written by: playwrights

language: vernacular, Middle English and early modern English. Little degree in Middle English, especially in early modern English.

place of performance: either in the pubs or in theatres-in-the-round(circular theatres with a wall).

time: any time, you have to pay money. There is entrance fee.

actors: professional actors.


Allegorical means: personification of abstract ideas. e,g. everyman, vanity, justice

justice is an abstract idea. If you put it into a character, it is allegory. To see the allegory of justice please click here  As you can see in the homepage, justice is blind and cannot see differences. It should treat everyone equally. This is the allegory of justice. For more information please click here

Everyman : prototypical of mankind.


We can say about the Morality plays:

1. More professional

2. Move away from the church

3. Entertainment: More entertaining, but still the idea of instruction.

4. Independent. 

For more information please click here 


There are 2 forms of Morality Plays:

1. closed plot

2. open plot


Everyman stands for morality plays of a closed plot. It is closed, because it is predetermined. It is clear what will happen.You know how the things are going to finish. There is one central character who is always representative of the mankind. It could be everyman, humanity or human soul.

Human soul is on the stage, and then vice characters come on the stage. There is bad influence on human soul by the vice characters. They usually drag him from the right part. Vice characters are: sensual appetite, vanity, greed, alcohol, fleshly liking. Vice characters are allegorical characters as well. These characters are sometimes seven deadly sins and sometimes others. Then the virtue characters come onto the stage. 

Vice characters and virtue characters are trying to influence the human soul. We have a usual sequence. At the end human soul regrets.

After regret, conversion comes. Conversion means: Human soul changes his behaviour. Then penitence comes. It means: You confess your sins and priest tells you that you should pray to get rid of your sins.

Then follows mercy. Mercy comes from above. Then forgiveness comes, and finally salvation.

There are eight steps in total and these steps are almost the same in the closed morality plot.


Another example is: Everyman is a very rich character. He is having a good party. Suddenly death comes and tells him that his time is over.

Death tells him that he has to account for his life in front of the God. Everyman is not pleased with this situation. He asks his friends for help. He asks them to accompany him in his death. He asks his cousin. Cousin represents here the family. He asks riches, but the answer is no. Riches is wealth. None of the characters wants to accompany him on his voyage to the other side. However, only two characters want to accompany him. These are good deeds and charity. 

In this plot vice characters are cousin and riches.

Virtue characters are good deeds and charity.

 

They accompany him in death. Dozen of others do not. 

Again we have regret at the end and then salvation.  

To read everyman click here 

 

2. Open plot: You cannot guess the end as in the closed plot.

An example of open plot: The Interlude of the Nature of the 4 elements.

Interlude means Morality Play. It is a different name for the morality play.

4 elements are : water, fire, air, earth.

At that times the state of the art was natural sciences.

On page 34 in the reader.

There is humanity.

virtue characters are: studious and desire

vice characters are: sensual appetite and experience.

The beginning is the typical morality play. Experience takes the humanity away to taverns and prostitutes. There is nature. The allegory of nature is on page 36. Nature is talking and judging in the judgements day. God is replaced by nature. Nature is frowning upon humanity. It tells him that he shouldn`t have done that( going to the pubs and sleeping with prostitutes).  Without the wish of sex humanity cannot live long. He cannot produce offspring and children. Humanity says my life cannot endure long. There is a pun here. Pun means joke. If it is forbidden for humanity to have sex how can he produce children?

Nature says you are right but not always do sex. You should go to church, read, etc. Nature accepts what humanity says. Nature doesn`t judge him. He agrees with him. Nature says that humanity needs sensual appetite. This is not predicted before. That is why this is an open plot. 


                                  PARADIGM SHIFT

At least 2 or 3 questions from here.

It is the whole of your ideas of the world. It is the whole of epistemes.

Shift from one paradigm to a different one.

Middle ages were dominated by christian catholic paradigm.

1. Old paradigm: It is  theocratic. All power belongs to the God, and God transmits it to the king.  

It is authority-related: in terms of bible.

All your knowledge derived from the Bible in the middle ages. People took the knowledge from the bible, not from exploring the world.

2. New paradigm: It is experience -related: your knowledge comes from senses.

It is anthropocentric: Regarding humans as the central element of the universe. Interpreting reality exclusively in terms of human values and experience.

Galileo  built a machine which could explore stars. He used senses. 


Now I will write about Raymond Williams. He has has a theory whose name is theory of cultural change. According to this theory cultural change occurs like this: emergent, dominant and residual.  Theo-centric paradigm stops and over a night anthropocentric paradigm starts. Cultural changes does not happen like this. Paradigms overlap with one another. 

The cultural change indicated above as emergent, dominant and residual are portrayed in literature. 

Closed plot is related to the old paradigm. Open plot illustrates the new paradigm. There are different cultural trends at the same time and this is simultaneously portrayed in literature.

Dominant trends are related to old paradigm and the emergent trends are related to the new paradigm. in 1500s dominant trend was still the dominant paradigm. In the open plot there is a mixture of old and new trends.

residual means: finishing. Still there, but not important any more.

Today the present paradigm is the capitalist system and science.

In the open plot, there is nothing pertaining to old paradigm, but also there are some ideas of the old world view, e.g going to the church.


In the exam write like this: Raymond Williams introduced the theory of cultural change. He illustrated a new trend. According to this new trend, literature illustrates the people`s ideas of the world.At the same time people share different ideas of the world, because cultural changes do not happen over a night. Different cultural forms overlap with one another. Literature reflects people`s ideas of the world. 

 

Comedies have to do with this anthropocentric world of view. There are very individual character traits in comedies.

There are different world of views at the same point of time, and these different world views produce different products.

If you believe in predestination very strongly, then the plot is closed.

90% of morality plays have closed plot. There are a few exceptions which have open plot, and one of these exceptions is on the reader on page 34 which is the interlude.

It is not clear that humanity is dead. There is no sign of it. Nature was away and after a while he comes back.  Humanity is human being. 


THE END.