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Abstract
‘Intermediality’ has become a fashionable centre of interest in today’s cultural and literary criticism. While ‘interart studies’ – the traditional domain of intermedial research – have tended, as a branch of ‘Comparative Arts’ or ‘Comparative Literature’ separate from the national philologies, to deal with all sorts of contacts between literature and such ‘high’ arts as music or painting, this essay argues in favour of a literature-centred investigation of contacts between verbal art and works of other media regardless of their status as high art and above all for a (re-)integration of such investigations into traditional national philologies. Presenting a short survey of some intermedial contacts occurring in the history of English fiction and taking Virginia Woolf’s “The String Quartet” as a main example of how another medium can shape fiction, the essay also shows that the concept of intermediality does not necessarily divert attention from the genuine concerns of ‘Literaturwissenschaft’, as conservative scholars might fear, but on the contrary is a valid tool for the elucidation of important theoretical and historical aspects of literature.
Abstract
From the late 1530s, when the translation of the Scriptures into English was authorised, there rapidly developed a new book-body of lay Bible-readers with new practices of reading and interpretation of the Bible. While the traditional biblical drama of the late middle ages was gradually suppressed or abandoned, a new generation of plays on scriptural subjects emerged, written by and addressed to these new readers. This paper explores the ways in which mid-sixteenth-century playwrights responded to the lively culture of Bible-reading in the early years of the Reformation. Increased focus on the literal, social and ethical implications of biblical stories guided playwrights towards a greatly expanded body of powerful narratives, which raised challenging human issues, allowing strong theatrical interpretation in relation to contemporary concerns. But the new theatrical strategies do not always sit quite comfortably with the special status accorded by Protestantism to the Bible as the word of God. These Reformation plays begin to suggest crucial tensions between drama and doctrine, inadvertently reinforcing the gradually increasing Protestant unease with the stage as a forum in which to address the Bible.
Abstract
From the late 1530s, when the translation of the Scriptures into English was authorised, there rapidly developed a new book-body of lay Bible-readers with new practices of reading and interpretation of the Bible. While the traditional biblical drama of the late middle ages was gradually suppressed or abandoned, a new generation of plays on scriptural subjects emerged, written by and addressed to these new readers. This paper explores the ways in which mid-sixteenth-century playwrights responded to the lively culture of Bible-reading in the early years of the Reformation. Increased focus on the literal, social and ethical implications of biblical stories guided playwrights towards a greatly expanded body of powerful narratives, which raised challenging human issues, allowing strong theatrical interpretation in relation to contemporary concerns. But the new theatrical strategies do not always sit quite comfortably with the special status accorded by Protestantism to the Bible as the word of God. These Reformation plays begin to suggest crucial tensions between drama and doctrine, inadvertently reinforcing the gradually increasing Protestant unease with the stage as a forum in which to address the Bible.