L’enfer, c’est les autres ”
En-gendering Sin in Middle English Religious Drama. The Case of Chester
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12948320 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Estella Ciobanu (0009-0007-4277-8282, Ovidius University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 87-107 |
| Publication date | 2021-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American, British and Canadian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1841-1487 • E-ISSN: 1841-964X |
| Publisher | De Gruyter Open (PUBLISHER • PL) |
| DOI | 10.2478/abcsj-2021-0006 |
| OpenAlex | W3190691430 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
This article investigates the relationship between sin and its retribution as depicted in three Middle English biblical plays concerned with retribution, Noah’s Flood , the Harrowing of Hell and the Last Judgement , in the Chester biblical drama collection. The plays’ general tenor is, to modern sensibilities, conservative and disciplinarian with respect to social mores. Yet, studying the portrayal of sin against the plays’ social background may uncover secular mutations of the Christian conceptualisation of sin as a function of gender as well as estate. Chester’s Last Judgement dramatises sin in accordance with fifteenth-century ecclesiastical and secular developments which criminalise people along gender-specific, not just trade-specific, lines. In showing Mulier as the only human being whom Christ leaves behind in hell after his redemptive descensus , the Harrowing dooms not just the brewers’ and alehouse-keepers’ dishonesty, as imputed to brewsters in late medieval England, but women themselves, if under the guise of their trade-related dishonesty. The underside of the Chester Noahs’ cleansing voyage is women’s ideological and social suppression. Whether or not we regard the Good Gossips’ wine-drinking – for fear of the surging waters – or Mrs Noah’s defiant resistance to her husband as a performance of the sin of humankind calling for the punitive deluge, the script gives female characters a voice not only to show their sinfulness. Rather, like the Harrowing of Hell and less so the Last Judgement , Noah’s Flood , I argue, participates in a hegemonic game which appropriates one sin of the tongue, gossip, to make it backfire against those incriminated for using it in the first place: women
Art · Economic Justice · Humanities · Ideology · Judgement · Literature · Politics · Retributive justice · Sociology · Theology · History · Law · Medieval and Early Modern Justice · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies
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Judith Butler
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Recycling the Cycle
The Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues
The Salvation of the Flesh in Tertullian of Carthage
The violence of rhetoric
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |