Sunday, December 5, 2010

Corpus Christi - 6

This show can't go without mentioning something about the festival in which it was set originally.

Leaning on ORO, I learned a little bit about it. The York mystery plays were set within a festival known as the Corpus Christi. Depending on the day on which Easter fell, it took place within the spring months and was completely mobile. The guilds would perform their mystery plays during this time, stories from the Bible from the Creation to the Last Judgment.

Many books have been written about the Corpus Christi, and much information is available online as well. In searching for a worthy wealth of information, I found this review about a book duly named The Feast of Corpus Christi, authored by Barbara Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Peter Rickets. The review of the book itself, written by Michael S. Driscoll and published in the Catholic Historical Review, is praised as being "honest" and "scholarly" (806).

The book talks on lesser known aspects than just the mystery plays, including known-history-of, what the performances by the musicians were like, and translations of found poetry and other documents.




Works Cited

"Corpus Christi" The Oxford Dictionary of Local and Family History. David Hey. Oxford University Press, 1997. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Central Washington University. 5 December 2010

Driscoll, Michael S. "Book Review: The Feast of Corpus Christi." Catholic Historical Review. 2008. Vol. 94: Issue 4. p806-807.


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